Quo Vadis RSPO: Support Status Quo or Transform as Agent who has Role to Respect Human Rights

(Jakarta, 11 December 2016) An honour on human rights is stated in RSPO Principal and Criteria (P&C) for the Production of Sustainable Palm Oil, particularly Principle 6 Criteria 6.13 mentions that growers and mills should respect human rights with the indicator of which the policy to respect human rights documented and communicated at every employees and operational level. National interpretation that streamlines RSPO Principal and Criteria which verified through Board of Governor Meeting on 30 September 2016 has not yet been elaborated into more operative and responsive provision toward the suffering experienced by the victims who got impacts from the operational of palm oil plantation, including the right of recovery as a basic condition for justice.

This could be proven empirically that the cases that have been reported through RSPO complaint system and cases that involve RSPO members regarding human rights violation has not yet been responded, handled, and resolved fully. It’s against Principle 2 which emphasizes on the compliance with applicable laws and regulations. This principle is then elaborated further through Criteria 2.1 which states that RSPO members have to comply with all applicable local, national and ratified international laws and regulations. However, the principles and norms of human rights that has been regulated into various ratified instruments of human rights international law has not been a reference standard for RSPO members to handle the case with justice. The affected victims still haven’t had immediate, effective, and proper recovery.

International Law guarantees that the victims of human rights violation have the rights to access effective recovery. This recovery is intended to alleviate the victims’ sufferings and to give them justice by omitting or avoiding the possible negative impacts. The recovery should correspond with the needs and wishes of the victims, and should be proportionate with the violations and loss caused. Therefore, the effectiveness of recovery system and mechanism should be more responsive toward a quick, thorough, and impartial investigation; stop the violations; and give adequate recoveries, including providing restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, and a guarantee that such violations will not occur again in the future. These principles should have become the basic guidelines in handling each complaint, either through Dispute Settlement Facility (DSF) or Complaint Procedure, in order to bring justice to each case.

RSPO complaint system itself was established and developed based on Principle 6: Responsible consideration of employees and of individuals and communities affected by growers and mills. Furthermore, criteria 6.3 state that there is a mutually agreed and documented system for dealing with complaints and grievances, which is implemented and accepted by all parties. This criterion has an indicator which mentions that the system resolves dispute in an effective, timely, and appropriate manner. However, this rule has not yet been applied in handling and solving the complaints through RSPO mechanism.

In this context, the 14^th RSPO Conference on 7-10 November 2014 in Bangkok which themed ‘Live Together; From Vision to Transformation’ manifested RSPO commitment in doing the transformation in order to make a strategic decision for putting human rights as the operational standard.  The strategic position of RSPO General Assembly should have optimized its members’ commitment in providing justice for the victims. Unfortunately, RSPO General Assembly which is the highest decision maker, and also acts as a forum that could be used to strengthen RSPO role as an agent that respect human rights, has not yet resulted responsive decisions for the victims.

The formulation of norms in Resolution GA13-6e which title: Protecting Human Rights Defenders, Whistleblower, Complainants, and Community Spokesperson, is still general. This resolution proposes to mandate and resource the secretariat support and facilitates the members of the RSPO Human Rights Working Group to urgently develop:

1. Accessible and adequately resourced procedures to allow human rights defender, whistleblowers, complainants and community spokesperson to register their concerns with the Complaint Panel in anonymity and security;
2. Clear guidelines for RSPO members on how to uphold the rights of human rights defenders, whistleblowers, complainants, and community spokespersons in their operations;
3. A proposal for graduated corrective actions to be required of any RSPO members which act in violations of these norms, to be submitted for adoption by the Board of Governors within 6 months.

This resolution is not enough in giving effective recovery to the victims due to the fact that it still below universal norm standard. Principle 29 of UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights emphasizes that business enterprises should establish or participate in effective operational-level grievance mechanism for individuals and communities who may be adversely impacted. That mechanism should be accessible directly to the victims. Basically, there are two key functions of non judicial grievance mechanisms:

1. These mechanisms support the identification of adverse human rights impacts as a part of an enterprise’s ongoing human rights due diligence.
2. These mechanisms make it possible for grievances, once identified, to be addressed and for adverse impacts to be remediated and directly as early as possible.

Based on the Principles Guidelines, at least the minimum standard of non judicial grievance mechanism, including RSPO, should have these following criteria:

1. The mechanism should be legitimate so it enables trust from the stakeholder groups and be accountable for the fair conduct of grievance processes;
2. The mechanism is accessible so it will easily being known to all stakeholder groups, and provide adequate assistance for those who may face particular barrier to access;
3. The mechanism provides a clear and known procedure with an indicative time frame for each stage, and clarity on the types of process and outcome available and means of monitoring implementation;
4. The mechanism ensures that aggrieved parties have reasonable access to sources of information, advise and expertise necessary to engage in a grievance process on fair, informed and respectful terms;
5. The mechanism helps keeping parties to a grievance informed about its progress, and providing sufficient information about the mechanism’s performance to build confidence in its effectiveness and meet any public interest at stake;
6. The mechanism ensures that outcomes and remedies accord with internationally recognized human rights.

Based on the above situation as well as to celebrate World Human Rights Day, ELSAM delivers these following messages:

1. RSPO has to affirm its commitment to resolve all the grievances by referring to recovery principles which regulated in international law instrument in order to build credible grievance mechanisms
2. RSPO should involve all stakeholders equally in RSPO decision making, including in resolving the grievances, in order to gain legitimate decisions.

Jakarta, 11 December 2016