State Violence and Environmental Destruction in West Papua
In collaboration with
- Angela Sherwood
- Samira Homerang-Saunders
Samira Homerang Saunders, Angela Sherwood and David Whyte are leading a coalition of 15 local and international NGOs to break the silence of the international community on the ongoing conflict over industrial development in West Papua.
The conflict has inflicted a horrifying toll of violence against the people and has accelerated the destruction of the Papuan rainforest, the third largest in the world after the Amazon and the Congo. Read their paper Independence, Anti-Capitalism and the Struggle for Our Future: Seeking an End to State-Corporate Violence in West Papua.
They initiated and hosted three days of Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal hearings on state and environmental violence in West Papua in June 2024. See the Indictment, the Tribunal Judgement, press reports and responses from the NGO community.
About the academics
Professor David Whyte
David Whyte is the Director of the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice. His research focusses on the relationship between law and corporate power. He has researched the regulation of business in a wide range of contexts (including working conditions, institutional fraud and corruption, economies of war and conflict, human rights violations and ecocide. His current research focusses on legal responses to climate change, corporate accountability for climate change and climate justice in the workplace.
Dr Angela Sherwood
Dr Angela Sherwood is Lecturer in Law at Queen Mary. Her research interests lie in state violence and migration governance; environmental harm and population displacement; and the criminology of humanitarianism. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Refugee Studies and in several edited volumes on themes of state crime, displacement, and international migration. Before starting her postdoctoral research, Angela worked for Amnesty International as a researcher/advisor on migrants’ rights where she led investigations into supply chain human rights abuse and migrant exploitation.