By Pauline Kamiri
Nairobi, Kenya: A group of 218 survivors and families of victims have lodged a formal complaint with the United Nations over plantation attacks in which 7 were killed and 56 raped during the post-election violence that took place in Kenya in 2007.
The workers say the British-Dutch firm failed to act on warnings of violence. They also say that the firm has violated international human rights standards by failing to assist its employees who were attacked in the violence.
The workers accuse the multinational of hiding behind its corporate structure and breaching in its obligation to remediate any human rights abuses to which it contributed which is central to the UN’s guiding principles on business and human rights and which the company has continuously endorsed over the years.
The workers have gone ahead to request the United Nation’s working group on business and human rights to make a declaration to this effect and to call on the company to provide redress.
A spokesperson of Unilever has however rejected any allegation that it violated the principles in the case of tea workers and has provided significant support to those employees that were impacted by the menace.
These workers lived on a plantation in Kericho, in the Rift Valley region, which was operated by a Unilever subsidiary and at the time hosting more than 10%of the company’s global workforce. Most were from the Kisii tribe which is not indigenous to the area.
In Kericho, the attackers invaded the plantation and assaulted hundreds of workers and their families. Following the violence, Unilever closed the plantation temporarily and sent workers home. The victims however say they were not paid for six months thereby exacerbating their situation.
A court case was taken to the United Kingdom with the above claims but in 2019 the supreme Court declined the jurisdiction, saying Unilever’s Kenyan subsidiary was the one responsible for risk management of any crises and as such any case related to this should be heard in Kenya.
