Each week, at least four men and women vanish without trace or are found dead, cut down in a hail of gunfire. Mysterious disappearances, political murders, the killing of women, gangland hits: thousands of cases, seemingly unrelated, are reported every year from all corners of the globe.

But according to political scholars and activists, there is a connection: more and more are dying protecting their land and homes from global industry’s relentless push to develop the natural resources that lie beneath their feet.

This bloodshed is both interconnected and global, they say, and is a direct product of a phenomenon dubbed ‘necropolitics’ or the ‘politics of death’.

This event will be a film screening and panel discussion on the Thomson Reuters Foundation special investigation, in eight countries, of the violent phenomenon dubbed ‘The Politics of Death’.

Watch the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/220826482/3d21502466

Run Time: 25 mins

Check out Place’s ‘Politics of Death’ website here: http://www.thisisplace.org/shorthand/politics-of-death/

Moderator: Paola Totaro, Editor, Thomson Reuters Foundation

Paola is the Land and property rights editor at the Thomson Reuters Foundation. She is an award winning journalist and immediate past Persident of the Foreign Press Association in London. Paola has worked as a writer and correspondent specialising in European affairs, politics, social policy and the arts and a former Editor of The Saturday Sydney Morning Herald.

Speakers  

Ana Zbona, Project Manager for Civic Freedoms & Human Rights Defenders Project  – Business and Human Rights Resource Centre

Ana joined the Resource Centre in 2016. Before joining, she worked as a manager of a fair trade/community development program with the NGO Mosqoy, working with indigenous communities in the Peruvian Andes. Prior to that, Ana was an advocacy assistant in the EU advocacy team of Human Rights Watch in Brussels, a research assistant for the Slovenian Human Rights Ombudswoman, and a fellow at the EU Delegation to the UN and at the Slovenian Mission to the UN.

Joe Avapura Moses – HRD and Chairman Paga Hill Heritage Association

Joe Avapura Moses is a community leader and a land rights defender with the Paga Hill community who lived along the waterfront of the Port Moresby peninsula in Papua New Guinea (PNG) before their homes were illegally bulldozed to make way for the Paga Hill Development Company Ltd. to develop a hotel, marina and exhibition centre.

As a result of his human rights work spearheading a legal resistance to this land grab, Joe has endured intimidation and police harassment, which ultimately forced him, his wife Ceyline and their two children into hiding.

Erin Kilbride – Media Coordinator, Front Line Defenders

Erin has conducted field research and led campaigning initiatives on human rights defenders facing severe threats in Bangladesh, Egypt, Tunisia, Burma/Myanmar and Bahrain, among others. She has reported for media outlets including Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, Think Progress, The Diplomat, Middle East Eye and Voice of America.

Professor Bobby Banerjee, Professor of Management, Cass Business School – Bobby’s primary research interests are in the areas of sustainability, climate change and corporate social responsibility. He has published extensively in leading scholarly journals and is the author of two books: Corporate Social Responsibility: The Good, the Bad and The Ugly and the co-edited volume ‘Organisations, Markets and Imperial Formations: Towards an Anthropology of Globalisation’. He serves on the editorial board of seven international journals and is Senior Editor at Organisation Studies. 

90% of the goods we consume in the West are manufactured in far-off lands and brought to us by ship. The cargo shipping industry is a key player in world economy and forms the basis of our very model of modern civilisation; without it, it would be impossible to fulfil the ever-increasing demands of our societies.

Yet the functioning and regulations of this business remain largely obscure to many, and its hidden costs affect us all. Due to their size, freight ships no longer fit in traditional city harbours; they have moved out of the public’s eye, behind barriers and check points. The film answers questions such as: Who pulls the strings in this multi-billion dollar business? To what extent does the industry control our policy makers? How does it affect the environment above and below the water-line? And what’s life like for modern seafarers?

Taking us on a journey over seas and oceans, the newest film from veteran director Denis Delestrac (Banking Nature) reveals in an audacious and gripping investigation the many faces of worldwide freight shipping and sheds light on the consequences of an all-but-visible industry.

Directed by: Denis Delestrac
Country: Spain
Year: 2016
Runtime: 90 mins

The panel will discuss how knowledge and understanding of environmental impact, extraction of resources and geopolitical issues have moulded the region, and what the consequences are for those of us watching from afar. With oil firm Royal Dutch Shell having recently won conditional approval from the US Department of Interior to explore for oil in the Arctic, we will be asking what this kind of exploration means for the region.

This event will be chaired by BBC Science editor David Shukman, whose reports on research have taken him as far afield as the Antarctic ice-sheet, the Amazon rainforest and the depths of the Gulf of Mexico. Since joining the BBC in 1983, he has covered Northern Ireland, defence, Europe and world affairs. He is author of An Iceberg As Big As Manhattan: Reporting from science’s new frontlines and Reporting Live from the End of the World.

The panel:

Pen Hadow is an Arctic Ocean explorer and advocate. He is the founder and leader of the multi-award winning Catlin Arctic Survey (2007-2013), an international research programme on the Arctic Ocean, and the associated environmental research-sponsorship agency, Geo Mission. A decade on, Pen Hadow remains the only person to have reached the North Geographic Pole, solo and without resupply, from Canada.

Professor Martin Siegert FRSE is co-director of the Grantham Institute. Previously, he was director of the Bristol Glaciology Center at Bristol University and head of the School of GeoSciences at Edinburgh University. His particular field of expertise is to use geophysics to measure the subglacial landscape and understand what this tells us about changes to the environment. In 2013 he was awarded the Martha T. Muse Prize for excellence in Antarctic science and policy, and in 2007 he was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Charles Emmerson is a writer and historian based in London. He is the author of The Future History of the Arctic, exploring the past, present and future of our relationship with the Arctic, from past mythologies of the north to the modern emergence of the Arctic as a zone of geopolitical interest and massive environmental change. He is an Associate Fellow at Chatham House.

Frank Hewetson has worked for Greenpeace for over 25 years. He has particular knowledge of protest against the off-shore oil industry, he has spent many months at sea and worked consistently on the Arctic campaign for the last 5 years, and was one of the ‘Arctic 30’ detained by the Russians in September 2013.

PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL BE FILMED AND STREAMED LIVE ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL

After many years of receiving a considerable amount of foreign aid, Haiti remains an impoverished and politically fragile state. AIDependence tells the story of the controversial relationship between the people of Haiti and international aid organisations, and exposes the negative side effects of the aid industry, including dependency, corruption, and the corrosion of solidarity and the economy.

Alice Smeets‘ documentary follows Robi, a young Haitian from the poorest slum in the western hemisphere, Cité Soleil, and Sabina, his American girlfriend and former aid worker. Together they work to change the traditional system of aid and are partisans of “Konbit Soley Leve”, a movement which aims to mobilise Haitian communities in solving issues related to healthcare and access to resources.

Through interviews with aid workers, economists, and Haitian activists, AIDependence breaks down stereotypes about non-governmental organisations, aid and poverty in order to shed light on the various models of international aid, and why some seem to work better than others. Using the example of Haiti, the country with the most NGOs per capita, Alice Smeets presents a well-informed analysis of how development projects can give rise to cycles of dependence rather than long-term solutions.

Directed by Alice Smeets
Duration: 90′
Year: 2014