Following SOMO’s publication Wood pellet damage (2021), the Dutch State Secretary of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy at the time, Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, ordered the Dutch Emissions Authority (NEA) to investigate the report’s findings. The results…
On Tuesday 28 June, the Honduran organisation COPINH and the Global Justice Association filed a complaint with the public prosecutor in the Netherlands against Dutch development bank FMO. For COPINH, this is part of their…
The EU has set a high standard for platform regulation. If properly enforced, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA), together with other digital regulation in the pipeline, will be landmark…
In a new Position Statement on Financial Intermediary (FI) Lending, Dutch development bank FMO argues for limited responsibility over the outcomes of investments that are channeled through commercial banks, investment funds, and other financial intermediaries,…
The European Union’s proposed batteries regulation should require importers and manufacturers to source the bauxite, copper, and iron used in batteries responsibly, a coalition of 16 organizations said today. The coalition includes Amnesty International, Earthworks,…
SOMO and GoodElectronics welcome the EU draft legislation on batteries approved on Thursday by the European Parliament and call on EU member states to agree on the text without delays or attempts to water it…
A handful of tech companies have become global gatekeepers to the modern world. Companies including Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft set the terms of communication for billions of internet users and have a sphere of…
Human rights organisation ECCHR and Dutch law firm Prakken d’Oliveira have petitioned the Dutch Public Prosecutor to launch a criminal investigation into garment companies for complicity in the exploitation and enslavement of Uighurs in the…
Members of the Indigenous Ngäbe Buglé people were brutally attacked by Panamanian police on Friday 29 October 2021 on a parcel of private land near the FMO-financed Barro Blanco hydroelectric dam. The victims, all members…
In this letter, SOMO – together with a group of NGOs – urge the European Commission to drop provisions that protect intellectual property in the economic agreement (CEPA) between Indonesia-EU. They fear that the so…
SOMO, together with a broad coalition, have sent a letter to health attachés and to the Health Commissioner of the European Union urging them to reconsider crucial aspects of the recently launched Health Emergency Preparedness…
SOMO and 140 other organisations support a just and rapid transition away from fossil fuels and towards a renewable energy system. However, we are concerned about the impacts of extracting minerals, such as lithium, cobalt,…
Last week, the Israeli Defense Ministry declared six Palestinian civil society organisations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) to be “terrorist organisations”. One of the organisations affected by the decision is SOMO’s long-standing partner Al-Haq,…
Current corporate sustainability reporting is badly flawed as open data principles are not applied. SOMO supports the call on the EU Commission and the European Parliament to make sure that stakeholder access, interoperability and collaboration…
We have serious concerns about the safety and wellbeing of Daw Myo Aye (also known as Myo Myo), leader of Solidarity Trade Union of Myanmar (STUM), who has been detained since April by the military…
SOMO has provided input for IOSCO’s consultation, and raised some overarching concerns regarding more systemic problematic issues surrounding ESG ratings and the companies’ long term impacts on planet and people. IOSCO (and the OECD) have…
As some Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donors are considering using their Official Development Aid (ODA) budgets to cover expenditures related to Covid-19 vaccines, the work of the DAC is critical to ensure that ODA eligibility…
SOMO and other NGOs welcome the fact that FMO has ceased negotiations on a $60 million loan to the Honduran bank Ficohsa. Unfortunately this does not dispel all our concerns. For instance, we do not…