Monsanto Faces International Public Trial: Transnational Farmers Accuse It of Ecological Massacre and Disregard for Human Rights

In July of this year, in an unremarkable building in The Hague, the Netherlands, several judges of the United Nations International Arbitration Tribunal issued a ruling on the South China Sea arbitration case that would shift geopolitics. Three months later, in a conference hall of the Academy of Social Sciences just a stone's throw away, a decision with implications for the future of human rights and ecology was brewing.

Hundreds of farmers, lawyers and environmental activists from five continents gathered together to testify, before five professional judges presiding over the Monsanto Tribunal, to the various crimes of this American agrochemical giant. From human health to animal welfare, from the right to food to freedom of speech and research, from the disappearance of biodiversity to the threats faced by protesters, the two-day agenda could hardly list all the crimes too numerous to record. But the victims rarely get to speak freely and exchange views, exposing a century-long catastrophe stained with blood and tears.

(Video source: Monsanto Tribunal)

Trusting Monsanto's Ads, Watching the Disaster Unfold Before Their Eyes

Victims often trust the ads and watch the disaster unfold before their eyes. Sabine Grataloup showed the judges photo after photo: nine-year-old Theo underwent a tracheotomy at birth and depends on a ventilator to survive. "Every 45 minutes, we have to wake him up to keep him from choking to death."

Grataloup, now 45, works at a horse farm in Isére in southeastern France. "Even when I was pregnant, I was still responsible for spraying herbicides, because I believed what the ads said: 'Glyphosate is the first biodegradable herbicide,' and I took it to be a product with no toxic harm, ignoring the risks." Yet Theo failed to develop a sound throat and esophagus in his mother's womb, and will be tormented by illness for life.

Maria Ruiz Robledo from Argentina described how her child also had an underdeveloped throat and esophagus. "The doctor told me that several children in his clinic had the same problem, and that it was caused by exposure to a toxic environment. What I could think of was the herbicide being sprayed in large quantities near our home."