Clouds of injustice Bhopal disaster 20 years on

Report cover. Image: A young protester taking part in a demonstration demands that the Union Carbide plant site in Bhopal be cleaned up, December 2002. The demonstration, outside the Dow headquarters in Mumbai, marked the anniversary of the 1984 disaster.

© Maude Dorr

Twenty years ago around half a million people were exposed to toxic chemicals during a catastrophic gas leak from a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India. More than 7,000 people died within days. A further 15,000 died in the following years. Around 100,000 people are suffering chronic and debilitating illnesses for which treatment is largely ineffective.

The disaster shocked the world and raised fundamental questions about corporate and government responsibility for industrial accidents that devastate human life and local environments. Yet 20 years on, the survivors still await just compensation, adequate medical assistance and treatment, and comprehensive economic and social rehabilitation. The plant site has still not been cleaned up so toxic wastes continue to pollute the environment and contaminate water that surrounding communities rely on. And, astonishingly, no one has been held to account for the leak and its appalling consequences.

Efforts by survivors' organizations to use the US and Indian court systems to see justice done and gain adequate redress have so far been unsuccessful. The transnational corporations involved – Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) and Dow Chemicals which took over UCC in 2001 – have publicly stated that they have no responsibility for the leak and its consequences or for the pollution from the plant. UCC refuses to appear before the court in Bhopal to face trial and the Indian government agreed to a final settlement which has left survivors living in penury.

The settlement, endorsed by the Indian Supreme Court in 1989, involved UCC paying US$470 million. Even this inadequate sum has not been distributed in full to the victims. About 30% of claims for injuries have been rejected by the government, around 16,000 claims are outstanding, and most of the successful applicants have received minimal amounts of compensation. At the time of writing in September 2004, around US$330 million of the US$470 million remained held by the Reserve Bank of India.

This report, for which Amnesty International liaised closely with survivors and those working on their behalf in Bhopal, looks back over the 20 years since the Bhopal tragedy through a human rights lens. Of the many complex issues that continue to be thrown up by the gas disaster, the report focuses on:

• the human rights impact of the leak and the contamination;
• corporate accountability for the leak; and
• the responsibility of the Indian state to hold UCC to account and to ensure victims receive adequate compensation and rehabilitation.

The report has two aims. The first is to expose the failure by UCC/Dow and the Indian government to comply with their respective obligations and responsibilities to (a) prevent the gas leak and address its consequences, and (b) prevent and stop the continuing pollution of the environment and water through the dispersal of toxic and hazardous substances. The second aim is to demonstrate – by showing how companies evade their human rights responsibilities – the need to establish a universal human rights framework that can be applied to companies directly.

Governments have the primary responsibility for protecting the human rights of communities endangered by the activities of corporations, such as those employing hazardous technology. However, as the influence and reach of companies have grown, there has been a developing consensus that they must be brought within the framework of international human rights standards. There is already a clear trend to extend international obligations beyond states, including to individuals (for international crimes), armed groups, international organizations and private enterprises. Amnesty International supports this trend and believes that companies have an inalienable responsibility for the human rights impact of their operations.