United Nations Radio

A UN human rights expert is calling on the Netherlands to provide assistance to Cote d'Ivoire in the aftermath of the 2006 dumping of toxic wasted around the city of Abidjan.

A ship registered to a Dutch company dumped untreated waste was at municipal waste sites in Abidjan. The toxic waste gave off poisonous gases, resulting in more than 40,000 people needing to seek medical treatment.

The UN expert, Okechukwu Ibeanu, said it was clear from a recent visit to Cote d'Ivoire that two years after the incident, not all the dumpsites had been decontaminated, and there were too few health facilities and very little access to healthcare and experts to deal with the scale of the health consequences for the victims.

Mr. Ibeanu, whose formal title is the UN Special Rapporteur on the adverse effects of the movement and dumping of toxic and dangerous products and wastes on the enjoyment of human rights, also called for increased cooperation among human rights and environmental NGOs and government agencies in raising public awareness about the effect of toxic and other dangerous products on human rights. He also called on the government of the Netherlands to be more vigilant in monitoring the operations of corporate bodies such as the one implicated in the Probo Koala case, named for the ship in question.

United Nations Radio, Diane Bailey.

(duration: