- Since 2019, human rights groups have filed numerous complaints against German supermarket chain Edeka and palm oil supplier NaturAceites, alleging the companies failed to respond to concerns from Indigenous communities in the municipality in El Estor, Guatemala, about land grabs, worker mistreatment, and water pollution.
- When residents complained, law enforcement allegedly used force to quiet protests — including firing tear gas into crowds that included women, children and elderly people.
- Last year, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil terminated certification for three of NaturAceites’ palm oil mills.
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, according to a complaint from this February.
“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 used for the Edeka brand.
The plantations used toxic pesticides that polluted the groundwater and depleted some residents’ drinking water, according to a February complaint reviewed by Mongabay. Runoff during the rainy season killed marine life in nearby Lake Izabal, Guatemala’s largest, which many residents rely on as a primary source of food.
“If it rained, the fish, turtles, manatees, all kinds of [marine life] died, even the birds that feed on the fish died,” Pedro Cuc Pan, a human rights defender in El Estor, told Mongabay.
Labor unions were banned, and many workers were too afraid to formally organize into a union, according to the complaint.
When residents complained about plantations encroaching on community land, law enforcement allegedly used force to quiet protests — including firing tear gas into crowds with women, children and the elderly.
In November 2021, Guatemalan authorities evicted members of Palestina Chinebal, a community in El Estor, allegedly at the request of NaturAceites, resulting in the destruction of homes and the killing of one resident, according to human rights groups.
More than 20 arrest warrants have been issued for Indigenous leaders since 2021, many of whom have had to flee their communities, the complaint said.
“The products we trade in are manufactured, produced or harvested under ecologically and socially acceptable conditions,” the Edeka press team told Mongabay in an email. “As a leading food retailer in Germany, we are aware of our social responsibility. That is why we are constantly working to improve working conditions in our supplier countries around the world.”
NaturAceites didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story.
In 2019, human rights watchdog Christliche Initiative Romero informed Edeka of the alleged human rights and environmental violations occurring on NaturAceites’ palm oil plantations. But Edeka didn’t make any changes to its supply chain, human rights groups said.
Other watchdogs like the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) and Foodwatch filed an internal grievance with Edeka, asking the company to establish a dialogue with Indigenous communities in El Estor. Edeka said it would implement some supply chain risk assessments, but never reached out to the communities or reported on any of the alleged measures taken, ECCHR said.
In a complaint from February this year, ECCHR said Edeka’s actions violated the German Supply Chain Act, which requires companies to assess human rights and environmental risks with direct and indirect suppliers, as well as engage with local communities.
“The community was expecting that Edeka would engage with them to actually talk about the situation on the ground so they could exercise their due diligence and engage with their suppliers to make sure this was effectively and properly addressed,” Duarte told Mongabay. “But that never happened. There was no consultation of the communities, despite repeated offers.”
Foodwatch filed a separate complaint under the German consumer protection law in October 2023, alleging Edeka was using misleading advertising by featuring the seal of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) on its products. The RSPO issues certification to companies that sustainably source palm oil.
In August 2024, the RSPO revoked several of NaturAceites’ five certificates for six months, and said they would only be reinstated if NaturAceites addressed the violations. When that didn’t happen, RSPO terminated certification for three of NaturAceites’ palm oil mills located in Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, Pataxte and Panacté.
“NaturAceites will be required to undergo a full recertification process should they wish to obtain certification for those units of certification at a later date,” the RSPO said in a statement to Mongabay.
Germany’s Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control is currently reviewing the complaints against Edeka, which could result in fines, new consultations with the communities, and internal changes to the company’s operations.
In the meantime, other palm oil producers continue to work in the area and employ residents from the Indigenous communities. Human rights defenders like Cuc Pan said they will continue to fight for their land and labor rights as long as the palm oil industry continues to operate in the area.
“We won’t back down,” Cuc Pan said. “They will never overpower us, even if they kill us one day. We have young people, we have parents, men and women ready to continue reclaiming these ancestral territories.”
Banner image: Palm oil plantations in Guatemala. Photo by Carlos Alonzo/Ocote Agency
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