EarthRights began its journey by working with communities to hold fossil fuel companies to account for human rights abuses in Myanmar. 30 years on, we continue to challenge the complicity of companies that are enabling the Myanmar junta’s crimes. We do so by advocating for targeted sanctions on key industries that fuel the military regime, and strengthening awareness around the role big oil companies and Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) among others, have in propagating continued violence and rights violations in Myanmar.
EarthRights set a precedent and ensured compensation for victims of atrocities of big oil companies that channeled funds to the military junta.
In 1996, in the face of severe human rights abuses, including forced labor, rape, murder, torture, committed by the Myanmar military to secure and construct the Yadana gas pipeline project, 11 Myanmar villagers, with representation from EarthRights and its partners, filed a lawsuit against U.S. oil company Unocal, accusing it of complicity in these abuses.
Unocal (later acquired by Chevron) was one of four investors in Myanmar’s Yadana pipeline, a joint venture with a 30-year contract to deliver millions of cubic feet of natural gas a day to Thailand. Plaintiffs in the suit, who lived in a remote region near the pipeline, said they were forced to work on the project in intense tropical heat with little food or rest. Soldiers assigned to guard the pipeline were accused of killing the baby of one worker who escaped from forced labor and raping a girl and her great-aunt. The plaintiffs, fearing for their safety, were living in hiding and filed suit in the U.S. as John and Jane Does to shield their identities.
In 2005, more than 9 years after the first case was filed, Unocal agreed to compensate the plaintiffs in a historic settlement that ended the lawsuit in both state and federal court.
Why it matters: Doe v. Unocal was the first time a human rights lawsuit against a multinational corporation resulted in compensation for the survivors. The case pioneered the use of the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) as a tool for addressing transnational corporate misconduct. While the scope of the ATS has since been diminished by the U.S. courts, Doe v. Unocal and the cases that followed fundamentally changed how boardrooms, shareholders and governments viewed the liabilities of corporations and the duties they owed to communities.
See Doe v. Unocal for more information about this case.
This landmark legal victory was a result of an effective legal strategy developed by EarthRights’ legal team and evidence collected by EarthRights and local investigators who documented abuses on the ground.
EarthRights played a key role in efforts to cut off gas revenues and financial flows to the military junta after it launched a coup in 2021.
EarthRights has been challenging the role of Big Oil in funding the Myanmar military since fossil gas started flowing through the Yadana pipeline. From 2000-2008 the Yadana Project generated US $7.58 billion in revenue for the military, but the quasi-civilian transition that lasted from 2010 to 2020 gave companies like TotalEnergies, Chevron and PTT the green light to continue. In February 2021, in the days after the junta terminated this transition, our civil society partners in Myanmar called on us to support them as they targeted gas revenues, which constituted the junta’s largest source of foreign funds.
EarthRights worked as part of a coalition of local and international CSOs, bringing our deep knowledge of gas revenue flows derived from documents we forced Unocal to disclose during the lawsuit. Our research and analysis demonstrated that oil majors were spreading disinformation on both their ability to divert revenues and the impacts of doing so, including showing that Thai energy security would not be significantly impacted by sanctions.
Armed with this information, Myanmar civil society called on TotalEnergies, Chevron, PTT, Posco and other fossil fuel companies to use their leverage to divert funds and disengage if they were unable to do so. EarthRights’ analysis showed both how these companies could do this and their responsibility under business and human rights frameworks to do so. We then worked with Myanmar partners to engage with UN bodies, lawmakers, government officials, the companies themselves and their shareholders.
While the primary target was gas revenues, together with Global Witness we carried out crucial research on sanctions coordination highlighting the need to target both gas revenues and the banking sector holistically. Following this in 2023 and 2024, the U.S., U. K. and Canada issued coordinated sanctions against Myanmar’s military regime, specifically focusing on restricting its access to funds, arms, and aviation fuel.
Why it matters: EU sanctions on the Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) were reported to have led to revenues from Myanmar’s Shwe gas projects being withheld from the junta, cutting it off from hundreds of millions of dollars. The junta needs this hard currency to buy the military hardware and jet fuel it uses to wage war on the Myanmar people, committing well-documented war crimes and crimes against humanity. Partial U.S. sanctions on MOGE also led to the junta having to receive payments in Thai Baht not U.S. dollars, imposing further costs.
Shareholder pressure ultimately forced both TotalEnergies and Chevron to exit Myanmar, depriving the junta of the expertise, resources and legitimacy that these corporations bring. The fact that these companies were able to keep funding the junta for as long as they did and then divest irresponsibly does, however, highlight the need for mandatory human rights due diligence backed by financial penalties. Efforts by PTT and other companies to invest further in Myanmar’s gas sector highlight the urgency of this.
See Fueling Atrocities: Why Corporate Investment in Myanmar Gas Sector Must Stop
In addition to our work on revenues, EarthRights continues to strongly support the people of Myanmar though the following initiatives:
- Supporting partners to document and campaign against the severe environmental destruction and human rights violations caused by heavy rare earth elements mining in Myanmar. See this Policy Brief for more information.
- Providing training on navigating legal repression, assessing threats and managing security risks; and providing materials in Myanmar-language that focus on the criminalization and judicial harassment faced by earth rights defenders (ERDs) in Myanmar. See these booklets for more information
- Providing training to defenders including Myanmar defenders through our Earth Rights Schools. See this blog post on a story from an EarthRights School alumni.
- Advocating to hold corporations accountable for human rights abuses in mining, dams and land rights issues, particularly in special economic zones (SEZs).
- Organizing networks that connect Myanmar defenders with regional peers for sharing skills and safety strategies, among others. See this blog on how the network continues to connect defenders.