UNIÓN FENOSA Violates Human and
Environmental Rights in Latin America
Spanish corporation Unión Fenosa is being accused before the Peoples’ Permanent
Tribunal of serious human rights violations and serious environmental and social
impacts in Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico and Nicaragua. The local governments and
oligarchies as well as the International Financial Institutions and the Spanish
government, have also been accused of connivance with those crimes.
Union Fenosa
is a Spanish transnational corporation that works on
the electric sector and has a leading position among electricity corporations
in Mesoamerica and Colombia. Its control in these regions was built through the
purchase of former state-owned corporations for a low price. Also, the purchase
of these companies enabled Union Fenosa to settle in
most of the countries under a monopoly regime, such is the case of Nicaragua
and Dominican Republic, or almost in a monopoly as in the case of Guatemala and
Colombia.
In Nicaragua and Guatemala, Union Fenosa is accused of flagrant human rights violations: it
violated the concession contract, it failed to invest in the electric network
and public lighting, which causes the death of human lives, cuts in the
electricity supply, discimination in the rationing,
abuses against the users (high tariffs, undue collection, high billing) and
violation of Labor and Trade Union rights. It is
worth noting that these impacts in the case of Nicaragua are not limited, as in
other cases filed before the Tribunal, to an area or community: it affects
almost all the territory and population of the country.
In Colombia, in its
electricity generation activities, Unión Fenosa is accused in the case of Salvajina
reservoir, of not answering for the social and environmental impacts caused to
the indigenous, afro descendants and peasant communities and of the
compensations provided under the 1986 Act.
Unión Fenosa takes advantage of its position of power in Colombia
to promote a legislation that goes against the interests of the Colombian
population, by failing to contemplate the distribution company’s obligation to
improve and expand the electric distribution network, by not forcing the universalization of a basic service like the access to
electricity, by violating the fundamental right of having access to an adequate
standard of living.
In México, Union Fenosa is accused of contracting an ecologic debt for the
construction of La Venta Eolic
Park in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, with over 500 aerogenerators and the occupation of over 1,000 hectares,
causing the resistance of the communities and the civil society, which have
aimed their struggle at the project, not only because of what it means in terms
of human rights abuses, but because information has been manipulated from the
beginning to deceive the communities and conceal the actual social and
environmental costs for the region.
Key issues: Privatization of
Public Services and violation of fundamental rights
Denouncing organizations: Movimiento Social Nicaragüense, Campaña Internacional: La Ir-Responsabilidad
Social de Unión Fenosa. Capítulo I: Nicaragua a oscuras
(ODG y OMAL-Paz con Dignidad), Red Caribe de Usuarios de Servicios Públicos Atarraya en Defensa del Agua y la Energía, Sintraelecol, Censat Agua Viva – Amigos de la Tierra (Colombia), Ceiba (Guatemala), Alianza de
Pueblos del Sur Acreedores
de Deuda Ecológica y Red Latinoamericana contra las Represas (REDLAR).