August 4, 2013

By Vicki Cervantes

We are writing to you regarding your organization's involvement in the 4th International Palm Oil conference being held by RSPO in Honduras on August 6, 2013. We have become aware of this conference only in the last few days.? We urge you to withdraw from this event due to the human rights crises in Honduras since the military coup on June 28, 2009, which is most intense in the palm growing region of the country.

The region with the highest rates of violent repression in Honduras is the Aguan region. Over 100 campesinos have been killed since 2009. Small communities have been forcibly evicted from their land and their homes and crops burned to the ground. This situation is well documented and tied directly to the African palm production interests of Honduras largest land-owners including Miguel Facuss, owner of the Dinant Company which is one of the sponsors of the conference.

Mr. Facuss, a prominent supporter of the 2009 military coup, controls 22, 000 acres of land.

In 2011, DEG, the German development bank, cancelled a $20 million loan to Dinant, when FIAN, an international NGO, presented them with a report documenting evidence of the involvement of private security forces hired by companies owned by Miguel Facuss in human rights abuses and, in particular, in the murder of peasants in Bajo Aguán.

In May 2012, a public hearing on the human rights situation in Bajo Agu?n concluded that the agrarian conflict is the most serious situation in terms of violence against peasants in Central America in the last fifteen years.

Our organization has traveled to Honduras many times as human rights observers and documentarians of the situation in the country. We have interviewed numerous survivors of the violence in the Aguan and the families of many of the murder victims, as well as human rights defenders in the country. Everyone tells us the same thing - that the ongoing impunity for perpetrators of human rights violence is increasing the violence.

It is both urgent and imperative that international organizations such as yours re-evaluate your work in Honduras, and stop endorsing, even indirectly, those who under the slogan of green, sustainable development, are building their empires on the bodies of the smallest producers and landless poor.

I look forward to your response to this email.

Sincerely,

Vicki Cervantes

La Voz de los de Abajo - Chicago

Signed:

World Wildlife Fund USA, Washington DC, Roberto Troya, Latin America and Caribbean VP/Regional Director, [email protected]

Solidaridad Network, Michaelyn Bachhuber Baur, Directora Regional Centroamerica, [email protected]

SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, Reintje van Haeringen,? Damien van der Heyden, [email protected],

ProForest, Oxford, Oxfordshire, South East, England, Ruth Nussbaum,[email protected], [email protected],