Name? Anneke van Woudenberg
Westphalian identity? Western European..? (An educated guess)
Age? Late 40s, early 50s
Why is she in the news? Van Woudenberg is the Executive Director of the human rights group Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID) which has complained to the UK government about the toxic wastewater spill in Chad by the UK-based mining and commodities giant Glencore. The UK government has finally accepted the complaint two years after the initial spillages occurred. .
Why do we care? Van Woudenberg said it best: “No community, whether they are in a remote area of Chad or elsewhere, should have to wait more than two and a half years for a company to investigate whether its toxic spill caused injury, especially when it involves so many children.”
Why should you care? If the equivalent of 34 Olympic-sized swimming pools of runoff from crude oil by-product flooded fields and rivers near you, impacting your water for drinking, washing and bathing, you would probably care a lot. However, we read these types of news way too many times and hardly give them a thought…even if that runoff resulted in many of the children in your neighborhood experiencing crude oil burns, skin lesions, sickness and diarrhoea so on our How much should you care scale, 2/10
Who else cares? Greta Thunberg is presumably outraged! Though she has managed her anger problems a lot better than Donald Trump lately…
Any further comments? This is a classic example of the role civil society plays as a watchdog. Neither the UK government nor the Chad government attempted to raise and address the issues brought on by Glencore and unfortunately, with reason. Glencore acquired oil reserves in Chad back in 2014, benefiting the UK government by exporting oil to the country and benefiting the Chad government through investment and job creation. Without RAID, the impacted communities most likely would not have been seen, much less heard.
