Mennonite Weekly Review

The Body Shop, a leading cosmetics maker, was one of the first corporations to develop a branding based on social responsibility. To build that reputation, it has supported environmental causes, fair trade and human rights.

Kathleen Kern, of Rochester, N.Y., serves with Christian Peacemaker Teams.

“For years we’ve campaigned against injustices, stood up for the vulnerable and spoken out for those without a voice of their own,” its Web site says.

“We insist that our business activities adhere to basic human rights, as enshrined in the Universal Declaration for Human Rights. We do this because we believe that beauty is as much about feeling beautiful as it is about looking beautiful.”

To the peasants of Las Pavas, Colombia, however, the Body Shop represents the ugly reality of displacement and destruction.

In 1993, 123 families began cultivating the land in Las Pavas, growing, among other crops, corn, squash and plantains. Under Colombian law, communities who work unused land for five years have the right to receive the title for it.

The Las Pavas families applied to the National Institute for Rural Development for the title several times, most recently in 2006. However, while this application was in process, the former title-holder of the land, an uncle of drug lord Pablo Escobar, sold the land to Daabon Organics, which supplies palm oil to the Body Shop.

Under Colombian law, the families had the right to stay on the land, because land cannot be formally transferred to a third party until the title is resolved. The Daabon company thus allegedly violated the law when it used a Colombian judge and police in riot gear to displace the families, destroy their homes and crops and cut down forest to plant palm. (As the palm trees planted in Las Pavas are not mature, Daabon has not yet sold oil from these palms to The Body Shop.)

Even if Daabon had obtained the land legally from the campesinos, the planting of huge palm oil plantations is problematic from a socially responsible perspective.

Originally touted as an eco-friendly product in food, cosmetics and biofuel, palm oil has become the target of environmental activists.

Demand for the oil has led to the deforestation of millions of acres in Asia and the Americas, causing terrible pollution as the forests are burned and jeopardizing endangered species such as the orangutan.