Sessions
Urgent legal action for a healthy planet: a new international crime of Ecocide
9:00 AM - 10:45 AM Wed
Steven Donziger is an American Human Rights Lawyer known for his legal battles with Chevron, particularly the Lago Agrio oil field case in which he represented over 30,000 farmers and indigenous Ecuadorans in a class action case against Chevron related to environmental damage and health effects caused by oil drilling. The Ecuadoran courts awarded the plaintiffs $9.5 billion (equivalent to $11.4 billion in 2021) in damages, which led Chevron to withdraw its assets from Ecuador and launch legal action against Donziger in the US.
Donziger was put under house arrest in August 2019 as a result of this legal persecution, which has been severely condemned by Nobel laureates, human rights campaigners, members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and also the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Having served the six month sentence Donzinger was finally released on 25 April 2022.