UN panel issues landmark ruling in agrochemical case

In January of 2011, twenty-three residents of a Paraguayan settlement surrounded by large-scale soybean fields suffered symptoms of poisoning. The first to fall ill, a 26-year-old man named Rubén Portillo, was not sent to the hospital for three days and—when he finally was—died on the way. The others became sick in the ensuing days, but were immediately sent to the hospital and eventually recovered. Samples taken from the well that supplied the settlement’s drinking water was found to contain Aldrin and Lindane, two agrochemicals targeted for elimination under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants and banned under Paraguayan law. But the discovery did not prompt prosecutions, nor even an investigation of whether Aldrin and Lindane had been used on the nearby soy fields. This month the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) weighed in on the case, issuing what experts are calling a... [Log in to read more]

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