Health (In)justices in Chad’s Oil Industry
摘要
Extractive multinationals have mitigated records in terms of social, economic, environmental, and health effects in resource-rich countries worldwide. This research seeks to reflect on the extent to which the Chadian oil industry does or does not contribute to the realization of the right to health as a human right in the context of a fragile state among the African oil-producing countries. We contend that companies involved in the Chadian oil sector are driven more by commercial rather than ethical considerations, resulting in health injustices and human rights infringements within the oil-producing area of Chad. Based on empirical qualitative data collection from Chadian oil fields and a systematic literature review on health and human rights issues in liaison with extractives, this chapter has shown the health effects of extractive activities. Consequently, human rights infringements are due to business logic, health determinant threats, and the negative practices of oil companies. By looking into the right to health prescriptions and legal requirements, companies, and international human rights norms and their denial or nonachievement for local communities in oil-producing areas, this Chadian case study illustrates that health injustices and inequities are detrimental to the enjoyment and effectiveness of the right to health in oil-rich countries in Africa. These drawbacks of extractives caused by multinational practices in Chad constitute challenges to the justiciability and enjoyment of human rights within extractive societies. The human rights–based approach is the instrumental analytical framework enabling us to assess the situation of the right to health in an extractive state in Chad and, therefore, by oil corporations.