Help win a landmark human rights case in SE Asia

Hundreds of Cambodian families are taking on the powerful Thai sugar producer Mitr Phol—supplier to global brands such as Nestlé, Mars and Coca-Cola—in Southeast Asia’s first-ever transboundary human rights litigation. With your help, they can win.

These families were violently driven from their farms and communities to make way for Mitr Phol's industrial sugar plantations more than a decade ago. At the time, Hoy Mai—a community leader and now the lead plaintiff in this case—traveled 300 miles while pregnant to the capital Phnom Penh to petition the Prime Minister for help. Instead, she was arrested and gave birth in prison. But she and her community have never stopped fighting. Left homeless and landless, families like Hoy Mai's were driven further into poverty.

Despite years of advocacy—including complaints to the Thai Human Rights Commission, which found Mitr Phol responsible for the land grabs that the families continue to suffer from—the deep-pocketed and well-connected sugar giant has refused to compensate them.  

Now, with the support of Inclusive Development International, our Cambodian partner organizations, and a team of Thai lawyers, Hoy Mai and the other plaintiffs are taking their case to the Thai courts in a groundbreaking class action suit that has the potential to change the game for corporate accountability in the region and around the world.  

If they win, it will prove that transnational corporations can be held legally accountable in their home countries for abuses they commit abroad. 

Visit www.inclusivedevelopment.net/cases/mitr-phol for more information on this groundbreaking human rights litigation.