A “Poison Country” – The Impact of Deadly Asbestos Fibers and the Struggle of Indigenous Peoples for Their Right to a Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment | HRC61 Side Event | Geneva Rights and Environment Talks 2026

About this Event

Banjima Elder, Maitland Parker, calls his Yurlu (homelands) “Poison Country” – a haunting, toxic truth etched into his body. Set against the breathtaking yet contaminated landscapes of Western Australia’s Pilbara region, the film YURLU | COUNTRY, from which extracts will be presented at this event, lays bare the devastating impact of the Wittenoom asbestos mines, where millions of tonnes of waste laced with deadly asbestos fibres have poisoned both land and people. It is Australia’s largely unknown Chernobyl-scale disaster and it is on Banjima lands.

The Banjima People have lived in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, now known as Wittenoom, for tens of thousands of years.

In the mid 20^th century, following years of operation of the Wittenoom asbestos mine with no regard for the Aboriginal people living in the area, the site has been blanketed in the deadliest type of asbestos, crocidolite. With 3,104,000 tonnes of contaminated crocidolite asbestos tailings left behind, the situation has earned the site the unwanted accolade of being the “largest contaminated site in the southern hemisphere,” covering approximately 470 km² of the centre of the Banjima homelands.

Though now closed since 1966, the legacy of asbestos persists. To date, it is estimated 2,000 people have died from asbestos disease-related deaths directly attributed to exposure to asbestos at Wittenoom. The true figure may never be known. The site also continues to pose dangers to the community living in the area due to exposure to the carcinogenic mining wastes. Such exposure will continue to claim lives and pose risk to a broad range of human rights, including the right to life, to health, to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, as well as the rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The loss of lives and songlines resulting from exposure of Indigenous Peoples from asbestos exposure in Wittenoom remains an open wound. To date, there still remains no plans to clean up the contaminated site. Aboriginal people in Western Australia have the highest death rates in the world from mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer caused primarily by asbestos exposure, due to Wittenoom and there isn’t a Banjima family that has not been affected. No longer able to wait for action, Banjima people have launched the ‘Clean Up Wittenoom’ campaign with planned litigation against the state of Western Australia to force the remediation of their lands.

At the 2026 edition of the International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights (FIFDH), the film will hold its premiere screening in Europe, on the evening of 9 March. The film follows the story of Maitland Parker who has dedicated his life to protecting Yurlu, his ancestral land, now poisoned by asbestos mining. Terminally ill with cancer, he confronts the inaction of the authorities and corporate greed in an effort to enable his people to reconnect with their land. The film reveals an environmental catastrophe comparable to that of Chernobyl, long rendered invisible, and told for the first time from the perspective of the Banjima people.

In September 2024, in the margins of the 57^th session of the Human Rights Council (HRC57), a Geneva Toxic Free Talk on Asbestos Impacts on Indigenous Australians already held a dialogue with the UN Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights, leaders and representatives of the Banjima People, as well as the director and producer of the film. The UN Special Rapporteur met Maitland Parker during his visit to Australia.

As a follow-up, this side event to the 61^st session of the Human Rights Council (HRC61) will pay tribute to the ongoing contributions of Banjima People and the Indigenous Peoples more broadly to ensuring the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Taking place as part of the Geneva Rights and Environment Talks, the event will feature a dialogue among the UN Special Rapporteur to the right to a healthy environment and representatives of the Banjima people. The event will also feature a preview of  YURLU | COUNTRY with the director of the film.

YURLU | COUNTRY at the International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights Geneva

Duration | 82’ – Year | 2025 – Director | Yaara Bou Melhem – Producer | Illuminate Films

At the 2026 edition of the International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights, the film YURLU | COUNTRY will hold its premiere screening in Europe.

A special event will take place on 9 March at 19:30 CET. The film screening will be followed by the discussion “Wittenoom: Poisoned Land, Ignored Crime”, featuring the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to a Healthy Environment alongside other leading voices. The conversation will explore how global dependence on extractive resources has often linked Western prosperity to environmental harm endured by local communities. It will also consider how the right to a healthy environment can be protected in the face of powerful economic interests.

Speakers

By order of intervention.

Marcos ORELLANA

UN Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights

Astrid PUENTES RIAÑO

UN Special Rapporteur on the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment

Yaara BOU MELHEM

Director/Producer, Illuminate Films

Johnnell PARKER

Banjima Traditional Owner | Vice Chair, Banjima Native Title Aboriginal Corporation

Ghazali OHORELLA

Human Rights / Legal Consultant, International Indian Treaty Council

Angela KARIUKI

Legal Officer, Law Division, UN Environment Programme

Yves LADOR

Representative to the United Nations in Geneva, Earthjustice | Moderator

Highlights

Video

Live from Palais des Nations

Summary

Yves LADOR | Representative to the United Nations in Geneva, Earthjustice | Moderator

• The land of the indigenous Banjima people has been contaminated by asbestos tailings left behind, and the situation has earned the site the unwanted badge of being the largest contaminated site in the Southern Hemisphere, covering approximately 470 square kilometers of the center of the Banjima homeland.
• The film “Yurlu | Country” lays bare the devastating impact of the Wittenoom mines, where millions of tons of waste laced with deadly fibers have poisoned both land and people.
• The UN Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights, Marcos Orellana, met the late Maitland Parker, a Banjima elder, during his visit to Australia in 2024. In September that year, on the margins of the 57th session of the Human Rights Council, a Geneva Toxics Free Talk on asbestos impacts on Indigenous Australians already hosted a dialogue with the UN Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights, leaders and representatives of the Banjima people, as well as the director and producer of the film.
• We are very emotional because this is the continuation of an adventure. The film will be screened for the first time at this year’s edition of the International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights.

Marcos ORELLANA | UN Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights

• I am very pleased to share some reflections on my meeting with Mr. Maitland Parker a couple of years ago. It was early in the morning in September 2023.
• A meeting had been scheduled with civil society and community leaders at the Conservation Council of Western Australia, one of the leading environmental NGOs in the state. There were representatives from communities affected by mining, aluminum production, and hazardous pesticides, among other toxic issues.
• Parker took the floor to speak about his lived experience with asbestos. He told me how many people in his community had contracted mesothelioma and died from it. He told me about his own struggle with the illness since 2016.
• He spoke about how toxic tailings have been sitting for over 60 years, spreading contamination. He also spoke about how the miners had walked away and it was now the government’s responsibility to deal with more than 3.5 million tons of hazardous tailings.
• But the government had been very slow to take any action, he said, and now people younger than him were also getting sick.
• One particular remark stayed with me: Mr. Parker mentioned how the Banjima people had fought hard for their native title, but they received back poison country.
• He spoke about how asbestos could even be found in areas with spiritual significance, such as the gorges.
• This point stayed with me because, despite the legal efforts of the community over the years, and despite the apparent successes in legal processes regarding native title and the ban on asbestos, the reality of toxic contamination of the land and of the people is appalling and heartbreaking.
• This situation speaks to the distance that we so often encounter between the formal realities of the state, its laws and legal processes on the one hand, and the lived experiences of communities whose lives, health, and sacred sites are sacrificed for the benefit of extractive industries on the other.
• That same day in September 2023, I had the opportunity to meet government officials at the Environmental Protection Authority of Western Australia.
• They spoke about their efforts to deal with the pollution, including closing the area and demolishing the contaminated town. They also spoke about how even the roads were contaminated with asbestos, making the whole operation very difficult.
• As they spoke, the words of Mr. Parker describing Wittenoom as the worst contaminated site in the Southern Hemisphere resonated in the back of my mind.
• After that meeting, I flew to Sydney to conclude my mission, including a debrief with government officials who spoke about the ban on asbestos 20 years ago and efforts at prosecution.
• A few months later, I presented my report on my country visit to Australia to the UN Human Rights Council. I was very pleased to hear the Australian Permanent Representative say that Australia welcomed the report and the country was already taking action to implement its recommendations.
• This leads me to reflect on the value of country visits as tools for the special procedures mandate holders of the Human Rights Council.
• These visits are not only a valuable instrument for international cooperation, which they certainly are. They are not only an opportunity for countries to identify challenges and share good practices.
• Country visits are also an opportunity for the United Nations to get out of its bubble of abstractions and connect at ground level with individuals like Mr. Parker who suffer human rights violations because their bodies, lands and territories are contaminated with hazardous substances and waste.
• I cannot stress enough how important it is for a UN Special Rapporteur to bring a message of solidarity directly to victims of human rights abuses and to take action to secure respect for their rights.
• Today, I want to pay tribute to Mr. Parker and his leadership in mobilizing his community to bring the story of Wittenoom to the world.
• I feel immense gratitude and a deep sense of privilege to have had the opportunity to hear from him firsthand about his experience with asbestos.
• Power to his legacy, and power to you all.

Astrid PUENTES RIAÑO | UN Special Rapporteur on the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment

• I presented my report on Friday, and that is why I had the honor of being here in person. Marcos has been following this case closely, and I want to highlight a few things.
• I will start with one of the points he made at the end: how important country visits are. Many people may not know that as Special Rapporteurs, we prepare reports and present them to generate these conversations. But we also have the opportunity to conduct country visits. Hopefully, we will manage to do even two country visits per year, although there are more than 180 countries.
• These visits are a great opportunity for the Special Procedures to help states identify challenges, be closer to people on the ground, and advance solutions. In cases like this one, they help identify options to improve the situation.
• Sacrifice zones, a concept to which the former Special Rapporteur on the Environment, David Boyd and Marcos Orellana prepared a report a few years ago about sacrifice zones. Unfortunately, what we are seeing with the Banjima people is exactly what we mean by a sacrifice zone.
• This case also highlights the importance of having adequate regulations and monitoring for businesses. This is something we have insisted on in relation to the human right to a healthy environment and the intersection between human rights, environment, and climate.
• As we know, we are now facing a triple planetary crisis: climate change, toxic pollution and biodiversity loss. These crises are not isolated. They are not separate issues. As we see with the Banjima case, they are layers of inequalities and injustices on top of one another.
• When we talk about the right to a healthy environment, there are substantive elements and procedural elements.
• Substantive elements include :
  • a safe climate
  • healthy ecosystems and biodiversity
  • clean air
  • non-toxic environments
  • healthy food and sustainably produced goods
  • healthy water
• We also talk about procedural elements, which include:
  • access to information
  • access to participation
  • access to justice and remedy
• This case shows the importance of these elements and how they intersect. We do not talk about one human right or another separately. Instead, we see how they interact.
• When we look at historic damage like this, it becomes evident that prevention is always a better option than remedy, and often less costly.
• We are talking about Aboriginal communities here, and this case shows the marginalization that sometimes occurs through systemic discrimination.
• However, we cannot only talk about people as victims. Indigenous peoples are also actors of change. For me, one of the most powerful aspects of the film and the experiences shared here is the knowledge they are bringing to Australia, to the country, and to the Human Rights Council.
• Their knowledge shows what happens when contamination is not adequately controlled and why it is important to learn from these lessons in order to move forward.
• This is a legacy pollution problem, but hopefully it can also become a case where a community protects its rights and advances access to justice.
• I hope this will also demonstrate why Australia should recognize the right to a healthy environment. The Australian Capital Territory has already recognized this right, and I hope this case can show why it is necessary.
• Australia voted in favor of the resolutions at the UN, and recognizing this right would be an important tool to help states address these cases and place human rights at the center.

A short extract from the film that illustrates what we have just heard from the Special Rapporteur:

Maitland Parker | Banjima elder

• I’ve come back here to the Country again now, to see this little waterhole lying here.
• I used to come here when I was a kid. Came here to stop. To camp. Eat a bit of tucker. To get fish here. This place is still here. But now there’s nothing.
• What a devastating sight to see. This is all the waste that has been here for well over 60 years.
• Country here, has been mined for asbestos. This is what’s left behind. All this rubbish, all the tailings. Country is no good, ruined. Poison has been left here.
• White and black, getting sick. Making my spirit feel bad. Whitefellas, they left it behind.
• The country is poisoned. All my Old People, we’re all crying for Country. We are all sick!

Yaara BOU MELHEM | Director/Producer, Illuminate Films

• I am a filmmaker, but also an investigative journalist for more than 15 years, and I was looking at a different film. I was investigating abandoned mines in Australia. Australia, as you well know, is a wealthy mining country, but it also has, on conservative estimates, about 60,000 abandoned mines littering the country, many of which have terrible environmental and health legacies for the communities that live nearby.
• Wittenoom was probably the most egregious example, not just because it has the unwanted title of being the largest contaminated site in the Southern Hemisphere, but because the contamination is uncontained.
• Unlike other disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima, which have contained toxic sites, Wittenoom is uncontained, and it is spreading and continuing to spread outside of this arbitrary contamination zone border. It is now outside that border.
• The blue asbestos mines closed about 60 years ago. This is the 60th anniversary of the closure of the mines, but they left more than 3 million tons of asbestos mining waste on the traditional lands of the Banjima people.
• If you go through Wittenoom, you would see these tailings dumps clinging to the sides of the gorges like a cancerous tumor. It very much mirrors what’s happening to the people who are exposed to that asbestos waste: their lungs are also being blackened by it. We wanted to show this in the film.
• That drew me to the issue, but it was Maitland Parker who drew me to the story. He seemed to be a lone voice shouting into the void about this issue, which is not well known even in Australia.
• What was quite extraordinary is that, as part of our investigation, we found out that Aboriginal people in Western Australia have the highest death rates from mesothelioma in the world, and that no Banjima family has not been affected by asbestos-related illness because of Wittenoom.
• We did not want to just make a film about an issue or about a sacrifice zone. For Maitland and for the Banjima community, this land is not something they can sacrifice. They cannot afford to sacrifice it because it is inextricably linked to the survival of their culture.
• We wanted to make a film about a man who loved his family, who loved his community, who loved his land, and was willing to fight for it right until the end. That is something we can all relate to.
• While his story felt like an epic, like a Greek tragedy where there would only be one end for Maitland, he did not want that to be the end of his story. We set out to make this film together as part of his legacy.
• He did something extraordinary for anyone, let alone an Aboriginal elder. He gave us access to some of the most intimate and private moments of a person’s life during the final year of his life, when he should have just been spending time with his family.
• He also spoke out about his illness, which is taboo among Aboriginal communities. He said his story had power, and he wanted Banjima people to use it to advocate for a cleanup of their country – and they are doing just that.
• In just the last month, the Banjima Native Title Aboriginal Corporation, of which Johnnell Parker here is Vice Chair, launched litigation against the state of Western Australia to compel remediation of their lands.
• The Western Australian government legally owns the contaminated site and the tailings dumps that are on it and has, to date, taken no action to remediate it. This is despite repeated parliamentary inquiries and government reports calling for a cleanup, and despite clear warnings that if nothing was done, the contamination would spread for “hundreds of years.”
• The government has so far said that the cleanup is too expensive, even though the cost of the cleanup would be a fraction of the billions of dollars it receives every year from mining royalties. The contamination is now spreading, and it is a matter of urgency to clean it up before more people are unnecessarily exposed to its deadly fibers.
• We made Yurlu | Country so that this issue, which has been out of sight and out of mind, swept under the carpet for so long, could come into full view. So that this narrative of a sacrifice zone of corporate greed and government indifference, which has led to a second dispossession of the Banjima people and the death of their elders, would not remain the status quo.
• We believe films have this remarkable ability to challenge the status quo, to reframe narratives, and to amplify voices that are often overlooked. Your support here today, in spotlighting this issue on the global stage, is also incredibly important in amplifying those voices. It sends a message that this is an issue that can no longer be ignored.
• This issue does not just speak to Wittenoom in a remote part of the northwest of Australia. Australia – and the world- is heading into the next mining boom for the critical rare earth minerals needed to power the clean energy transition. Australia is forging deals around the world in relation to these minerals, which it is rich in. So the question is: will we deal with our current mining legacies – the more than 60,000 abandoned mines that we have – or will we repeat our mistakes?
• This is why we say change should start with Wittenoom: at the very least, the largest contaminated site in the Southern Hemisphere.
• When I asked him how he was able to continue this seemingly intractable struggle to clean up his country, Maitland told me that his old people, his ancestors, were walking with him, giving him the strength to continue.

Extract From Yurlu | Country 

Maitland Parker | Banjima elder: The old town of Wittenoom has now been demolished by the government. Roads and tracks have been blocked off, and nobody can go into the gorge anymore. Signs have been put up warning people about the dangers. I have a role to play here to make sure that I advocate for my people. That is my will and my push to get the government to do something about it.

Marcos Orellana: You said that members of your community who did not work in the mine are getting sick. Did I understand that correctly?

Maitland Parker | Banjima elder: Myself, I didn’t work in the mine, but I worked in Karijini National Park as a park ranger. My generation of people is now also being affected by it, and a lot of them have it and will continue to get it and get sick from it and eventually, I guess, pass away and die from it. The tailings are continually being spread by wind and by water. Poison country, I also say.

Johnnell PARKER | Banjima Traditional Owner | Vice Chair, Banjima Native Title Aboriginal Corporation

• Thank you for this opportunity to be able to come here and tell the story of my people, my elders, and families that have passed due to this contamination being in Banjima Country. For me, this legacy is three or four generations deep for us.
• We have sat in this space and had our elder advocate on behalf of all of us in our community to clean the country up. The state government has yet to do anything. So we chose to launch legal action as Banjima people and to ask the question now: what are we going to do, and who’s going to help us?
• Because we cannot continue this as Aboriginal people, and especially as Banjima people. We are still very much connected to our country and our place. When lands are no longer of commercial use, they still mean something to us as Aboriginal people – as people belonging to the country, and the country belongs to us. We are one and the same.
• When toxic waste is in our country and everybody leaves, we are still there. We are still part of its fabric. We are still part of the history and the story. They buried buildings, but they did not bury the stories of our community. They didn’t bury the stories of our ancestors. They didn’t bury the stories of what it means for us as Banjima people to remain connected through hundreds of thousands of years on country in Australia.
• It is a place where we, as people, are now saying to anybody who wants to listen to us that when the country is sick, we as a people are spiritually sick. But this toxicity has also resulted in physical sickness. My old people in my community lived their lives on country, and then this happened, and nobody looked back to see what happens afterwards.
• I now have family members who have contracted this disease, and because of the incubation period of mesothelioma, they live with the unknown of this happening.
• I am very proud to be able to sit here, and I would like to pay special mention to Corinne, Carmel, and Renara, and Uncle Maitland’s wife Margie, who were very brave in standing beside Uncle and showing this story along with Yaara.
• As Banjima people and as the Banjima community, we now would like to bring this story to the world to say that when land is of no use to anybody, it still means something to us.

Ghazali OHORELLA | Human Rights / Legal Consultant, International Indian Treaty Council

• We need to be very clear about is that Wittenoom is not an anomaly. It is not some isolated incident. It’s not a case study we can examine – or the UN can examine – and then move on. It is the predictable, inevitable result of a system that has made a choice time and time again to prioritize industry over Indigenous lives. And this is what we call environmental violence.
• I want us to understand what that means in practice. Think about how a smoke detector works. It beeps. But when there’s smoke, it goes off. And that’s the whole point. It doesn’t wait for a committee to reach consensus on whether there’s actually a fire. It doesn’t poll your neighbors to see if they smell smoke too. It just warns you. Because waiting for unanimous agreement while your house burns down; that’s not safety. That’s negligence.
• But that’s exactly how we designed the global chemical conventions. These are very relevant to this conversation. The science is screaming that asbestos kills people. The alarm has been going off for decades, and we built a system that says, “Well, let’s wait a while, until everyone agrees there’s a fire.” Meanwhile, Indigenous peoples are the ones breathing the smoke.
• There are three points that are very pertinent here.

1. The structural failure of the global chemical conventions.

• We are at the United Nations discussing the destructive failure of the chemical conventions: the Rotterdam and Basel Conventions. These were built, designed and intended to regulate transboundary hazardous waste and to ensure explicit informed consent. At least, that was the promise.
• Here’s what happened: they have been paralyzed. Year after year, efforts to list deadly substances have often failed because of the consensus process. A handful of states, just a handful, are allowed to hold the entire global community hostage by blocking consensus. Some of those states are the largest manufacturers and stockpilers of asbestos in the world.
• And we watch, everyone should understand this: we watch member states bring so-called scientists to the BRS COP. These scientists look the world in the eye and claim that asbestos is not harmful. That decades of research and scientific consensus are fabricated, that the global community has been misled by paid actors. We can call it what it is: blatant state-sponsored disinformation. And what it provides is political cover – political cover for environmental violence, for industrial-scale disasters like the one sitting right now on Banjima homelands.

2. The legal baseline – not the aspiration, but the baseline – of Indigenous peoples’ inherent rights.

• Something is troubling happening at the Human Rights Council. There’s a profound reluctance to acknowledge the actual right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. Some resolutions use phrases like “human rights obligations relating to the enjoyment of a safe, clean, healthy, and sustainable environment,” where the use of the word “enjoyment” matters as it means a privilege, not a legal baseline.
  Replacing the word “rights” with “enjoyment”: you give states an out. You give them political cover to look away, to ignore disasters like the one forced upon the Banjima people, to treat environmental violence as something other than what it is – a direct assault on the rights of Indigenous peoples.
• Article 29 of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples does not contain suggestions; it is absolute. States shall take effective measures to ensure that no storage or disposal of hazardous materials takes place on the lands or territories of Indigenous peoples without their free, prior, and informed consent. It is not aspirational language. It is a legal requirement.

3. The reality of our contributions to this planet and the urgent, very real threat of their commodification.

• While states are stalling, while they’re debating, while they’re holding meetings about toxic waste, Indigenous peoples are out there leading the way. We are doing the work. We practice pesticide-free farming, chemical-free farming. We use heirloom seeds, traditional seeds, and these are time-tested seeds. They restore living soil. They absorb carbon. Our subsistence livestock actively limit carbon footprints. They protect biodiversity.
• Indigenous knowledge is guiding small-scale farmers and fisheries toward sustainable agriculture. The world is finally beginning to move beyond the assumption that industrial chemicals are necessary for food production, and it is drawing on our knowledge to get there.
• But let me conclude with the danger. Because our systems work, because they’ve been proven over generations, our knowledge is being treated as an extractive commodity. It is being taken without consent. Indigenous peoples are actively engaging in many processes to protect our genetic resources, including marine genetic resources and Indigenous knowledge, and to ensure that our inherent rights are respected.
• We cannot and we will not achieve a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment if a handful of states can veto the regulation of known killers. Environmental justice requires more than talk. It requires naming environmental violence for what it is. It requires cleaning up the poison that has been left behind. And it requires truly respecting and recognizing Indigenous peoples, who are actively keeping this planet alive.
  That’s the key.

Angela KARIUKI | Legal Officer, Law Division, UN Environment Programme

• Environmental harm falls hardest on those who have the least power. At its core, the environmental rule of law is about ensuring that environmental laws and institutions are transparent, accountable, and accessible, especially for those who are most affected by environmental harm. It means ensuring that governance systems do not only exist on paper, but that they actually work in practice for communities whose health, livelihoods, and cultures depend on the environment.
• Across all the regions in which we are working, we are finding that the communities most exposed to pollution and environmental degradation are often those with the least influence over the decisions that shape their environments. Indigenous peoples, fenceline communities, those living closest to industrial facilities, mining projects, or toxic waste sites, are frequently bearing the heaviest burdens.
• For these communities, environmental harm is not abstract. It’s felt in contaminated water, in polluted air, in damaged ecosystems, and too often in the rising rates of serious illness that we saw in the clips shown today.
• We also see this in Kenya, the home of UNEP, where the community of Owino Uhuru in Mombasa lived for years with severe lead contamination linked to a nearby smelting plant. Many residents, including children, suffered serious health consequences. But after sustained community mobilization and legal action, the Kenyan Environment and Land Court recognized this harm and ordered compensation and remediation measures.
• We see it also in Louisiana in the United States, where residents living along heavily industrialized corridors have raised alarms for years about unusually high cancer rates linked to petrochemical pollution.
• Behind every case like this are real lives, real families, and real loss; and a reminder that environmental harm isn’t only about pollution, but about rights.
• The legal systems are increasingly part of the response, but only if communities are actually able to access them. Looking again at our regional work, we see that communities are turning more and more to courts to seek recognition of the right to a healthy environment, or environmental rights more generally, and accountability for environmental damage. This is encouraging.
• But courts can only deliver justice if legal systems are equipped to respond. Through our work on the environmental rule of law, we are supporting countries to strengthen environmental legislation and also to build capacity among judges, prosecutors, and lawyers so that legal systems can respond effectively to claims from communities.
• The case of Owino Uhuru is a reminder of both the potential and the limits of this approach. Accountability was achieved, but only after years of community mobilization and sustained legal effort. The central question is really how we ensure that communities exposed to environmental harm are heard – and that they are protected before the damage becomes irreversible.
• Visibility matters, and storytelling is essential to making injustice legible. Many of the environmental injustices we are talking about only become visible because communities speak out – often environmental human rights defenders, many of whom are Indigenous peoples. They are often the first to bring attention to environmental harm.
• Storytelling, including through films like this, plays an essential role in making these experiences visible and ensuring that affected communities are heard beyond their immediate context.
• This was also reflected during the seventh session of the UN Environment Assembly in December last year, where Indigenous peoples convened the first-ever special dialogue at UNEA, highlighting the importance of Indigenous knowledge, governance, and participation in environmental decision-making.
• Films like this remind us that environmental governance is not only about policies or legal frameworks. It is also about people.
• Delivering on the right to a healthy environment requires governance systems that genuinely listen to and work with the communities most affected by environmental harm. Protecting the environment is not only about safeguarding ecosystems: it is also about ensuring that no community, anywhere, is treated as expendable.

Yaara BOU MELHEM | Director/Producer, Illuminate Films

• I suppose within legal frameworks and processes, the Banjima people have launched litigation against the state responsible for this toxic site. Within Australia, when a company walks away from a mining site, it is often left to the taxpayer, the public, to deal with the problem and its aftermath. In a way, we’ve privatized the profits and socialized the problem afterwards. This is exactly what we have seen with Wittenoom as well.
• For Maitland, it was not important to him who was responsible. It was important to him that it got cleaned up, no matter whether it was a corporation that was involved or whether it was left to the government. For him, the spiritual harm was profound, and the only way to remedy it was to heal his country, because the health of his country was inextricably linked to the health of him, his family, and his community.

Johnnell PARKER | Banjima Traditional Owner | Vice Chair, Banjima Native Title Aboriginal Corporation

• For me, being able to have this opportunity to highlight what is happening on Banjima in the country is truly something very special because it’s a legacy piece. It is something that has been passed through generations.
• As Aboriginal people, as Banjima people, we’re asking the question because it’s impacting us after the fact. But an environmental issue should be everybody’s responsibility and everybody should be up in arms about the fact that we have the largest contaminated site on our country and we, as the Aboriginal people and as the Banjima people.
• The custodians of this land, are now asking who is going to fix it up after it is everybody’s gone because we are still there and we will continue to be there.

Astrid PUENTES RIAÑO | UN Special Rapporteur on the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment

• It feels a little bit useless to speak after all that, but I want to highlight a few things. This is what we are talking about: the importance of remedy. As we heard, unfortunately, this is not the only case worldwide or in Australia, and it touches legacy, because it also touches multigenerational impacts.
• In the rapporteurship and with other mandates, we are also working for the rights of present and future generations. And this is what we also mean by remedy: it’s important to do it today, but also for the future, for the past and the future. Even if we close our eyes, the impact on the environment is still there.
• This case also shows the interlink between rights, between generations, between the rule of law and the consequences, of course, of impunity.
• As Johnnell was also saying, what happens when the remedy is not done? There are the Master’s Principles on the Rights of Present and Future Generations, which were developed for climate but also touch on the link with the environment and nature. It also shows, and I think it has been evident, that humans are part of nature. While we sometimes see this more clearly with Aboriginal or Indigenous peoples, we are all part of nature.
• The film also shows the testimonies we heard, linked with Yurlu | Country – but we haven’t even touched the link between this contamination and clean air, transboundary waters, and so on. That is what I really want to emphasize: the importance of remedy.
• In the report I prepared on clean air, one of the key aspects I suggest states to use are the decisions from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights. This is about changing the burden of proof, exceptionally, in extreme cases. When there is scientific evidence of exposure – and I was looking at clean air, but I think this should apply to other contexts as well – when we have scientific evidence of extreme pollution, when there is also evidence that people are exposed to this extreme pollution, and when there is evidence that the state has not complied with its obligation to prevent or control the pollution, then the burden of proof in litigation should be shifted so that people should not have to prove the causal link between the health impacts or the illness and the pollution.
• We have already seen this in decisions like The La Oroya Case in the Inter-American system and also with the Canavacciulo case in Italy. But we need to advance this further to ensure justice, specifically, and not get lost in procedure, because if we get lost in procedure, these injustices will continue. We need the law to be at the service of people, and as a remedy.

Photo Gallery

Links

• Environment @ 61st Session of the UN Human Rights Council
• Geneva Rights and Environment Talks
• YURLU | COUNTRY
• International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights Geneva