Future of Guantánamo Detainees Must Be Resolved

The US government must redouble efforts to resolve the future of detainees still held at the military facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Amnesty International said after President Barack Obama acknowledged his administration would not meet his deadline for its closure.

"Over recent months, US authorities have allowed the Guantánamo detentions to become a political football, and the politics of fear to trump human rights," said Susan Lee, Director of the Amnesty International's Americas Regional Programme.

"Now, as should have been the case from day one, the government should resolve these detentions by either bringing the detainees to fair trial or immediately releasing them," Susan Lee said.

On 22 January 2009, President Obama signed an executive order committing his administration to resolving the cases of the detainees held at Guantánamo "as promptly as possible", and to closing the detention facility "no later than one year from the date of this order."

In his comments on Wednesday, President Obama would not put an exact new date on closure, stating only that he anticipated it would happen sometime later next year, and adding that it would “depend on cooperation from Congress."

Hopes for an end to the Guantánamo detentions this year have receded over recent months as members of Congress sought to block the closure of the facility, and the administration has been slow to charge detainees.

At the same time, diplomatic efforts to find solutions for detainees who cannot be returned to their home countries for fear of the human rights violations they would face there have been undermined by the refusal of the US authorities to release any in mainland USA.

Amnesty International has long called for the Guantánamo detainees to be brought to trial in an independent and impartial court – not a military commission – or immediately released.

It has also repeatedly called for the USA not to seek the death penalty in any case.

Since President Obama took office, 26 detainees have been transferred out of Guantánamo, leaving 215 still there.

One detainee has been transferred to face trial in a federal court in New York and the administration has announced that another five will also be transferred to the city for such trials, with the likelihood that the death penalty will be sought against them.

The US Attorney General has also said the administration has decided to refer another five cases back to the Pentagon for trial by military commission.

In his 22 January order requiring his administration to ensure "prompt and appropriate" resolution of each and every Guantánamo case and to close the Guantánamo facility within a year, President Obama pointed to the "significant concerns raised by these detentions, both within the United States and internationally".

"Those concerns have not gone away, and will be reignited by President Obama's comments today", Susan Lee said.

(Source: Amnesty International, BBC News, CNN, Flickr)

Merkel Hails Eastern Courage At Wall Anniversary

Chancellor Angela Merkel hailed the courage of easterners who helped bring down the Berlin Wall as the city celebrated the 20th anniversary of the events that marked the end of the Cold War and the beginning of a reunited Germany.

The first chancellor to have grown up in communist east Germany, Merkel is hosting dozens of world leaders, past and present, to remember the fall of the Wall.

"The night of November 9, 1989, was the fulfillment of a dream," Merkel said. "Many played a role. But it would not have been possible without the courage of the people in the former East Germany."

Merkel took a walk with former Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev and former Polish leader Lech Walesa across the bridge at Bornholmer Strasse where East Berliners first breached the border two decades ago in an emotional rush to freedom.

Later Monday, 1,000 brightly colored dominoes set up along a 1.5 km (0.9 mile) stretch where the Wall once stood will be toppled as world leaders watch from the Brandenburg Gate, once a symbol of division and now the signature image of a reunited Germany.

Images of the historic night when easterners trapped behind the 3.6-meter (12-foot) high concrete barrier crowded into checkpoints have dominated German television and newspaper coverage for the past week.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- representing the World War Two allies -- are all in town to give speeches.

In pre-released excerpts of his Monday evening remarks, Brown hailed the "unbreakable spirit" of men and women who dared to "dream in the darkness."

Sarkozy put a picture of himself on social networking site Facebook that he said showed him hammering away at the Wall on the fateful night.

"It was a night full of enthusiasm: the German people reuniting marked the end of the Cold War and the start of a period of great freedom in Europe," he wrote.

Deadly Barrier

Backed by the Soviet Union, the East German government began erecting its "anti-fascist protection barrier" in the early hours of August 13, 1961, to end a mass flight of its citizens into capitalist West Berlin.

Initially a makeshift fence of barbed wire, it was gradually built up into an imposing 156-km (97-mile) barrier that encircled the three western sectors of the city and was patrolled by guards who were ordered to shoot anyone who tried to escape.

According to a study published this year, at least 136 people were killed at the Berlin Wall between 1961 and 1989 while trying to flee.

Thousands of others managed to evade the minefields, guard dogs and watchtowers, using schemes including tunnels, aerial wires and hidden compartments in cars to make it to the West.

The Wall fell after Politburo spokesman Guenter Schabowski told a news conference on November 9 that East German citizens could leave through border crossings, effective immediately.

He was unaware that the decision was not supposed to be announced until 4 a.m. the next morning. Watched by thousands on television, it prompted a rush to the border that unprepared, overwhelmed eastern guards were unable to contain.

Not a single shot was fired and the night turned into a giant city-wide party with easterners roaming the streets of West Berlin in disbelief and residents from both sides of the Wall embracing each other impulsively.

"You made this all possible," Merkel said to Gorbachev, who refused to order a crackdown. "You courageously let the things happen. That was much more than we could have expected."

Helmut Kohl, chancellor when the Wall fell, promised easterners "flourishing landscapes" when the two Germanys unified a year later.

But despite an estimated 1.3 trillion euros in transfers to rebuild the East, the so-called "new states" still suffer from unemployment rates twice that of the West.

A poll of over 1,000 Germans for the Leipziger Volkszeitung daily showed one in eight wanted the Wall rebuilt -- with the numbers nearly equal in East and West.

(Source: Reuters, BBC)

Stonewall Awards 2009

Jan Moir, the Daily Mail columnist whose column on the death of gay Boyzone singer Stephen Gately provoked widespread anger, won the Stonewall Bigot of the Year Awards last night jointly with Father John Owen, the priest who said most paedophiles were gay.

Moir was a late nominee, but was chosen after Stonewall received an unprecedented response from its members following the publication of her piece last month.

Last night's ceremony at the Victoria & Albert Musuem was opened by Stonewall chief executive Ben Summerskill, who spoke about the recent attack on Liverpool gay policeman James Parkes.

Citing the MP David Wilshire, who is being investigated over his expenses, Summerskill reminded the crowd he was the politician who pushed Section 28, which banned teaching about homosexuality in schools, through parliament.

He said: "If any government tries again to introduce a piece of legislation as offensive and demeaning as Section 28, Stonewall is here and we will fight back."

Summerskill then introduced television presenter Gok Wan as the evening's host.

The Winners

The first award, for Publication of the Year, went to G3, the magazine for gay women.

Next up was Politician of the Year. Ben Bradshaw, the secretary of state for culture, media and sport. Introducing him, Wan paid tribute to his struggle through discrimination, saying he was the first openly gay man to reach cabinet level. Bradshaw said he was "honored and humbled" by the award.

Booker Prize nominee Sarah Waters won the Writer of the Year award. Accepting her gong, she said: "This probably isn't a good time to mention my new book doesn't have any lesbian characters." But she added: "I'm thrilled to bits."

Boyzone won the Entertainer of the Year prize, which was accepted by Stephen Gately's civil partner Andrew Cowles.

He got the biggest cheers of the night while walking up to the stage to collect the award from host Gok Wan. Cowles told the crowd that Shane Lynch from the band had hoped to attend the awards but was not able to make it.

The Sports Award of the Year went to Michael Hill, the motorbike racer. He saw off Allison Fisher, HotScots FC, Hope Powell and Kings Cross Steelers RFC to win the award.

There was a joint win for Johann Hari and Joan Bakewell, who both won the Journalist of the Year award.

Bakewell said she was "enormously proud" and recalled the days when gay men could be prosecuted for their sexual orientation.

Hari said: "Joan was on our side when things were totally different. It's up to the rest of us to take these battles forward. The cultural battle is still here."

Samira Ahmed, of Channel 4 News, won the award for Broadcast of the Year for her piece on 'corrective' rape of lesbians in South Africa. Ahmed was not able to attend the ceremony and her husband collected the award on her behalf.

Jan Moir - Bigot Of The Year

Inevitably, the announcement of the Bigot of the Year award caused the most boos and hisses. Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir had been added to the list of nominees at the last minute, after Stonewall received a deluge of complaints about her article on Gately's death from supporters.

She was announced as the joint winner with Father John Owen, who said most paedophiles were gay.

Summerskill told the audience that he had phoned Moir to invite her to the ceremony "but she was so excited she dropped the phone".

The final award to be announced was Hero of the Year. This went to Rev Scott Rennie, the gay man who was appointed as minister of Queen's Cross Church, Aberdeen.

Rennie's ordination was opposed by many because he lives with another man, but his congregation overwhelmingly selected him as their minister.

Accepting his award, Rennie said: "Thank you very much. I am deeply humbled to receive this." He also paid tribute to his congregation, thanking them for their support.

Overall the decision of who actually won the wards seemed to go down well with the audience, however through watching the awards, with most of them going to gay men, Stonewall realised that there don't seem to be many British gay women television personalities.

(Source: Pink News, Flickr, BBC News, CNN)

Web Addresses Go Multilingual

The regulatory body overseeing the internet has approved the use of website names being written in non-Latin characters.

Viewed as the biggest change in the 40-year history of the internet, it will allow millions of users to use Chinese, Arabic, Korean and Japanese characters for a full internet address, instead of just part of it as now.

The board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), voted on Friday to allow such scripts in domain names at the conclusion of a seven-day meeting in Seoul, the South Korean capital.

Domain names are the monikers behind every website, e-mail address and Twitter post, such as '.com' and other suffixes.

The approval comes a day after the 40th anniversary of the internet's inception in a computer experiment by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles.

'Great Initiative'

Wael Ghanim, Google's product and marketing manager for the Middle East and Africa, told Al Jazeera there is now intense interest in the Arabic domain.

"The Arabic domains is actually a great initiative which shows that there is global interest in the Arabic domain as well as it solves a clear problem of transliteration whereby there are a lot of different ways where you can write an Arabic name into English."

There are an estimated 40 million Arab internet users and the number is rising daily.

The decision also allows governments or their designees to submit requests for specific names. That move is expected to begin on November 16 and users could start seeing the names in use early next year, particularly in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts in which demand has been among the highest, Icann officials have said.

Potential Problems

However, not everyone is happy with the changes.

Chang Yong-wong, an internet user, says that certain language domain names could pose some problems.

"If Korean is used during the international communication, foreigners will not be able to understand and will not be able to read it well enough, so there could be some problems in communication."

Since their creation in the 1980s, domain names have been limited to the
26 characters in the Latin alphabet used in English, as well as 10 numerals and the hyphen.

Technical maneuvres have been used to allow portions of the internet address to use other scripts, but until now, the suffix had to use those 37 characters.

That has meant internet users with little or no knowledge of English still had to type in Latin characters to access websites in Chinese or Arabic.

Now, Icann is allowing those same technical means to apply to the suffix as well, allowing the internet to be multilingual.

(Source: Al-Jazeera, YouTube)

£20,000 University Bill, Getting a Job: Impossible

I recently graduated with a Masters Degree in Journalism from the University of Westminster, I never thought that finding a job would be a challenge, five months later and I am still applying for an average of around eight or nine jobs a week.

I've applied for everything from Journalism and PR to Web and Online and even retail! I now have a Christmas temporary job at The Disney Store on Oxford Street, London.

I had my first shift last Monday and all I could think about when handing out baskets to customers, was how I have spent over £20,000 educating myself (BA Politics + MA Journalism) over the last five years.

I recently went to a John Lewis assessment day where I did exceptionally well, I got selected to stay behind with only four others out of 50. I am not sure how many people they were hiring but I suspect it to be around 50-80 as they are only temporary Christmas positions.

I haven't heard anything from John Lewis so I take it I didn't get the job, how I don't know, is that what £20,000 has bought me; interviews with 17 years old for a pathetic shop job!

Should You Go To University?

A lot of the feedback I get from failed interviews tends to sound like this: "We thought you were too over qualified for the job" of course I'm over qualified to work as a charity fundraiser but I need a job!!!

Have I educated myself out of a job? I hope not but the more time that goes by that's how it looks.

If a 18 years old were to ask me whether they should go onto University, I would say NO, don't bother. Instead go into an apprenticeship scheme or do a few internships for large organisations and work your way up the ladder, at least by the age of 24 you will have a job!

UK Graduates

Out of all the people I know from both my undergraduate and postgraduate degree I would have to say that only 5% of them have actually got a job that they can foresee becoming their career.

The rest are either desperately unemployed and only the dole or working in retail and hospitality to try to get some urgently needed cash to pay back the mountain of University debt.

They are not only competing with there own year of graduates (2008) now they have the class of 2009 to wrestle with for those all important secure well paid jobs.

Golden Eagles Filmed For The First Time Hunting Reindeer

Golden eagles have been filmed hunting and attempting to kill reindeer calves.

One eagle is filmed swooping down and grabbing a calf, while another pulls out of an attack at the last minute.

A BBC natural history film crew gathered the extraordinary footage along a reindeer migration route in northern Finland.

It finally proves this eagle species does occasionally hunt reindeer, something suggested by forensic evidence and the local Sami people.

The crew filmed the behaviour while capturing footage of the reindeer migration for the BBC natural history series Life, though the images were shot at too far a distance to be included in the final cut of the high-definition programme.

Television producer Dr Ted Oakes, cameraman Mr Barrie Britton and scientist Mr Harri Norberg set out to film the hunt along the northern edge of Finland.

For his PhD thesis Mr Norberg has spent the past few years studying how predators interact with the reindeer, which are known as caribou in North America.

Mr Norberg would tag calves, then search out those that had stopped moving to find out what killed them.

By examining the bodies, and the size and shape of claw, bite or talon marks, he ascertained that the majority of reindeer calves in the region were being killed by eagles.

But he had never actually witnessed such an attack.

"It is also something that the Sami had always told people and complained about but people didn't believe them," says Dr Oakes.

How They Did It!

To get documentary evidence of the behaviour, Dr Oakes and his colleagues used four-wheeled bikes and the advice of local Sami reindeer herdsmen to follow the reindeer along their migratory route.

Striking a new camp every few days or hours, the crew kept up with the animals as they moved out of the forest and into more northern, open and mountainous land.

The reindeer travel there to avoid wolves and biting insects such as mosquitoes.

"When the reindeer get out in the open, that's when the eagles have a chance," says Dr Oakes.

The film crew captured a handful of successful and aborted attacks on camera.

"One of the things I witnessed was an eagle up a kilometre high and it put its wings up over its head and it fell in a bizarre way, vertically," describes Dr Oakes.

"Then in the last 100 yards it went into a low powerful glide and hit the back of a calf."

"This is an extremely dangerous thing for an eagle to do, because the prey is much larger and heavier."

To kill a reindeer, the birds strike it in a specific region in its haunches, driving their talons into the mammal's kidneys.

"They are not killing anything instantly so they have to ride like a rodeo cowboy on the back of the calf," says Dr Oakes.

"No wildlife filmmaker has ever filmed this before."

"Another one was when the eagle came down and landed near to the calf and was trying to make up its mind," recounts Dr Oakes.

"I think it had misjudged the approach to the calf and ended up on the ground. It was staring at the calf thinking whether it should have another go and the mother reindeer ran in and scared the eagle away."

More often that not the golden eagles appeared to attack white calves, rather than tan or brown ones, though the crew do not know why.

According to Mr Norberg, it is usually immature golden eagles that attempt to kill the calves. However, he also believes the birds occasionally hunt adult reindeer.

These birds are often scared off from the newly killed calves by white-tailed eagles that also live in the region.

The larger white-tailed eagles are not thought to predate on reindeer, but scavenge their carcasses instead.

The BBC series Life is broadcast at 2100BST on BBC One each week from Monday 12th October.

(Source: BBC Natural History Unit, Flickr)

WaterAid Launches New Six Year Strategy

Global charity, WaterAid has launched a new six year strategy to increase its commitment to its vision of safe water, improved hygiene and sanitation for all.

The strategy involves ambitious targets such as:

• providing a further 25 million poor people with safe water
• reaching 100 million more people through a commitment to influencing the policies and practices of governments and service providers

WaterAid hopes to significantly extend its reach by aiming to work in 13 new developing countries.

The launch is accompanied by a new film, outlining in more detail the strategic aims:

The strategy also looks at some of the key challenges ahead for WaterAid, such as how to access socially marginalised groups within communities, rapid urbanisation, increasingly stressed water resources and a changing and unpredictable climate.

WaterAid’s UK Chief Executive, Barbara Frost, said: "These are challenging times for everyone, but communities in the developing world need help to break the cycle of poverty more than ever. It is simply unacceptable that 4,000 children continue to die on a daily basis because they don't have access to safe water and sanitation."

"WaterAid will continue to call for water and, in particular, sanitation, to be prioritised by decision-makers at all levels. With the right political will, we believe that our vision of a world where everyone has access to these basic human rights is achievable."

"Without them, many of the Millennium Development Goals set for maternal and child health, primary education and economic growth will fail. Such issues will become ever more relevant as the world’s population continues to grow, and there is increasing stress on global water resources."

"This, together with the threat of climate change, means that there is an increasingly urgent need to tackle the sanitation and water crisis."

WaterAid’s Four Strategic Aims:

• To promote and secure poor people's rights and access to safe water, improved hygiene and sanitation
• To support governments and service providers in developing their capacity to deliver safe water, improved hygiene and sanitation
• To advocate for the essential role of safe water, improved hygiene and sanitation in human development
• To further develop as an effective global organisation recognised as a leader in our field and for living our values.

Fast Facts:

• At least 4,000 children die every day as a result of diseases caused by unclean water and poor sanitation.
• 884 million people in the world do not have access to safe water. This is roughly one in eight of the world's population.
• 2.5 billion people in the world do not have access to adequate sanitation, this is almost two fifths of the world's population.

To find out more, visit www.wateraid.org.

Forced Eviction in Nigeria - World Habitat Day Special

This is a short film about forced eviction in the Ngofaka-polo Waterfront community Port Harcourt, Nigeria.

Njemanze and Abonnema Wharf are within the project site of a commercial entertainment project called "Silverbird Showtime".

UN-HABITAT estimates that "The Silverbird Showtime project" alone will lead to land clearance affecting between 100,000 and 150,000 people.

Forced Eviction

Governments in Africa must end the practice of forced evictions that leave hundreds of thousands homeless every year.

In most cases evictions are conducted without any due process, consultation, adequate notice or compensation. Officials carrying out the evictions often use excessive force against residents.

"It is completely unacceptable that governments across Africa continue to act in violation of regional and international law, including the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights," said Erwin van der Borght, Amnesty International’s Africa Programme Director.

"Governments have a responsibility to ensure that no further forced evictions take place in Africa and that victims of forced evictions receive adequate alternative housing and access to effective remedies."

Amnesty International has documented cases of forced evictions in Angola, Chad, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Sudan, Swaziland and Zimbabwe. The effect of forced evictions can be catastrophic, particularly for people who are already living in poverty.

"Forced evictions result not only in people losing their homes and personal possessions, but after forced evictions people may no longer be able to access clean water, food, sanitation, work, health and education," said Erwin van der Borght.

As recently as July and August 2009, mass forced evictions were carried out in Angola, Chad, Kenya and Nigeria.

In Angola, between 20 and 26 July, around 3,000 families were forcibly evicted from their homes in the adjoining neighbourhoods of Iraque and Bagdad in Angola’s capital Luanda. The families’ homes were demolished, their possessions destroyed, and they were left without shelter.

In Chad, since February 2008, tens of thousands of people have been made homeless after being forcibly evicted from their homes in N’Djamena, Chad’s capital. Houses and other structures have been demolished in several neighbourhoods. Homes were still being demolished in late July 2009, and more people are at risk of being forcibly evicted.

In Kenya, in July 2009, approximately 3,000 people were forcibly evicted from their homes in Githogoro village, in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. The evictions were carried out without adequate notice or any consultation with those affected. Many were left without shelter, some being forced to live in the rubble of their former homes, and without access to clean water, sanitation or health care.

In Nigeria, in August 2009, the government of Rivers state began forcibly evicting thousands of people to make way for a cinema complex: thousands more remain at risk of forced eviction and destitution. Many of those facing forced eviction claim the state government's consultation on the planned evictions was not adequate. The people who live there have received no adequate alternative housing.

Protests on World Habitat Day

People from all over the African continent are planning protests on World Habitat Day to condemn the mass forced evictions being carried out by governments.

Survivors of mass forced evictions, residents of informal settlements and Amnesty International supporters in Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Togo and Zimbabwe will speak out with one voice against forcible evictions in Africa on 5 October 2009.

Amnesty International members in Austria, Canada, Finland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the UK and the US will engage in simultaneous campaigning activities in solidarity with their call.

"The mobilisation of people from all over Africa in defiance of the hugely destructive practice of mass forced evictions carried out by governments continent wide is a wake up call to African leaders," said Erwin van der Borght.

"People will not stand by as their homes are illegally destroyed by their government."

As part of its Demand Dignity campaign Amnesty International calls on governments in Africa to adopt guidelines for evictions, based on the UN Basic Principles and Guidelines on Development-Based Evictions and Displacement, and which comply with international human rights law.

Let Africa's Leaders Know What You Think

SMS your own personal message to +447786 200 220 [local operator charges apply] saying why forced evictions in Africa need to be brought to an immediate end. Your message will be passed on to governments all over the continent and will be displayed on www.demanddignity.org.

Short Films On Forced Evictions:

Ghana
Kenya
Nigeria
Zimbabwe

(Source: Amnesty International)

The Evening Standard For Free!

The London Evening Standard will drop its cover price and go free from October 12, the publisher has confirmed.

The number of circulated copies of the title will also be doubled from 250,000 a day to more than 600,000 daily, a release said.

Quoted in the release, Alexander Lebedev, chairman of Evening Standard Ltd, said he was sure other 'quality' papers would follow the Standard's lead.

It is hoped that decision to go free and increase circulation will increase the paper's reach.

"Sustaining a paid-for afternoon newspaper had its challenges even before the freesheets were launched in 2006. There are so many competing distractions to potential readers, particularly with new technologies. Being a quality newspaper with large scale and reach should transform our commercial fortunes," said Andrew Mullins, managing director of the Standard, in the announcement.

"This is an historic moment and great opportunity for the London Evening Standard. Its owners will be funding the distribution of over 600,000 copies of the newspaper, making it available to more Londoners than ever before. And most importantly this will be a quality newspaper," added editor Geordie Greig.

Greig, who joined the paper in February replacing Veronica Wadley after Lebedev bought the title, said the Standard's future was 'exiting and secure' and described the doubling of its distribution as a 'pioneering strategy'.

The title's move to free follows News International's decision in August to shut its freesheet thelondonpaper after reporting a significant pre-tax loss in the year to June 29 2008.

The Standard faced stiff competition from thelondonpaper and launched Standard Lite, which later became freesheet London Lite, following its launch in 2006. But Associated Newspapers retained ownership of Lite after the Standard's sale to Lebedev.

Print distribution of the title has fallen from 309,908 copies in June 2006 to 236,000 copies for the first six months of 2009, according to a MediaTel report on statistics from the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC).

Whether the Evening Standard and the London Lite will still be publishing this time next year is uncertain. From a readers point of view the London paper seemed to be a success with a huge readership and distribution, however it was soon realised by News International that it was just not viable anymore.

Will any other papers follow the Standard's lead and star distributing for free?

The most important question of all:

Will newspapers free or not still be around in 20 years?

(Sources: Flickr, Journalism.co.uk)

Oil Spills In The Niger Delta Cost Lives

'If you want to go fishing, you have to paddle for about four hours through several rivers before you can get to where you can catch fish and the spill is lesser... some of the fish we catch, when you open the stomach, it smells of crude oil.'

This is what a Bodo fisherman told Amnesty International earlier this year, the Bodo fishermen are victims of Shell and other oil companies, oil spills in 2008 and 2009 which have still not been cleaned up.

Amnesty International published a damning new report revealing how decades of environmental damage by Shell and other oil companies in the Niger Delta has caused serious violations of local people's human rights - leaving them to drink polluted water, eat contaminated fish, farm on spoiled land, and breathing in air that stinks of oil and gas.

Launching the report at a press conference in Abuja, Nigeria, Amnesty called the situation in the Niger Delta a 'human rights tragedy,' saying that the people of the Niger Delta have seen their human rights abused by oil companies that their government cannot or will not hold to account.

Shell is the biggest oil company operating in the Niger Delta.

The 141-page report, 'Petroleum, Pollution and Poverty in the Niger Delta', examines oil spills, gas flaring, waste dumping and other environmental impacts of the oil industry. The majority of the evidence on pollution and environment damage gathered by Amnesty International, and contained in its new report, relates to the operations of Shell.

The human rights impact of pollution in the Niger Delta is greatly under-reported. The majority of people in the Niger Delta depend on the natural environment for their food and livelihood, particularly through agriculture and fisheries.

The human rights organisation also accused the Nigerian government of effectively placing substantial responsibility for remedying human rights abuses in the hands of the very actors responsible for the abuse - the oil companies. As a result, remedies are often ineffective.

Audrey Gaughran, Amnesty International Head of Business and Human Rights, said:

'A government's failure to protect the human rights of its people does not absolve companies from responsibility for their actions.'

'Oil companies such as Shell are not free to ignore the consequences of their actions just because the government has failed to hold them to account. The international standard is not 'whatever a company can get away with' - there are international standards for oil industry operations that oil companies in the Niger Delta are very well aware of.

'Despite its public claims to be a socially and environmentally responsible corporation, Shell continues to directly harm human rights through its failure to adequately prevent and mitigate pollution and environmental damage in the Niger Delta.'

Shell and other companies also do no adequate monitoring of - or disclosure of information on - the human impacts of oil operations.

Amnesty International said that clean-up processes in the Niger Delta frequently fail to meet any expert understanding of good practice, with some companies negligently allowing unqualified staff to clean up oil spills, resulting in ongoing contamination of land and water.

Almost every community visited by the organisation recounted that creeks, ponds or rivers had been damaged by oil spills or other oil-related pollution - often more than once, leading to community anger.

Communities and armed groups in the Niger Delta have also contributed to the problem of pollution, by vandalising oil infrastructure and the theft of oil. But the scale of this problem is still not clear.

(Source: Flickr, Amnesty International)