A German supermarket and its supplier are under fire for alleged human right violations against Indigenous communities in Guatemala, where much of their palm oil is sourced. Since 2019, human rights groups have been filing complaints against German supermarket chain Edeka and palm oil supplier NaturAceites, claiming the companies failed to respond to concerns from Indigenous communities in El Estor, Guatemala, about land grabs, mistreatment of workers, and pollution of drinking water. There was also an alleged failure by certification groups to ensure the supply chain was free of environmental and human rights abuses. “There’s a rights dispute between the company and the community, who has traditionally inhabited these lands,” Laura Duarte Reyes, senior legal adviser for the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, an NGO, told Mongabay. “What they are actually asking is not even that the company disappear or stop production, but that they respect the areas where they have subsistence crops and that they can live without all the violence and criminalization.” Palm oil companies arrived in the municipality of El Estor in the late 1990s, promising job security and benefits to many of the Indigenous families recovering from the country’s civil war. The families say they were offered education, health care, roads, streetlights, drinking water and salaries, among other things. Because verbal agreements are customary in their communities, many residents never signed anything with their employers. The palm oil cultivated in El Estor helped produce different kinds of margarine, vegetable creams and vegetable fats allegedly…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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