Historic Wins for Democracy and Rights in El Salvador
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- Published: Monday, 26 June 2017 11:09
Robin Broad and John Cavanagh : Ethics and International Affairs
Recently there have been two giant wins for democracy, human rights, and the environment in an unlikely spot: the small, embattled nation of El Salvador.
The most recent win was in March 2017, when the national legislature voted overwhelmingly to make El Salvador the first nation on earth to ban all metals mining, an activity that threatened that nation’s water supply. Who could have imagined an editorial in the New York Times entitled “El Salvador’s Historic Mining Ban” on April 2, 2017?1 The other win occurred six months earlier, in October 2016: After a seven-year battle, a World Bank Group-affiliated arbitration tribunal ruled unanimously against a global mining firm that sued El Salvador for not granting it a mining license.2 Global corporations have been winning most of the lawsuits in these so-called “investor-state” tribunals, but here again El Salvador prevailed.
The results of the much-anticipated vote were unanimous: 69 in favor, none against, and no abstentions. Fifteen of the country’s 84 lawmakers did not show up for the vote.
In an historic vote, El Salvador became the first nation in the world to ban metal mining. On Wednesday, March 29, the Legislative Assembly voted unanimously to approve the Law to Ban Metal Mining, which prohibits all mining activities from exploration to extraction to processing.