Council for Namibia plans legal action to enforce Decree on resources.

Council for Namibia plans legal action to enforce Decree on Resources

The United Nations Council for Namibia will institute legal action in the Netherlands against URENCO, a company known to process Namibian uranium in violation of the Council's Decree No. 1 for the Protection of the Natural Resources of Namibia.

An announcement to that effect was made by the Council--the legal Administering Authority for Namibia until independence--on 2 May. The announcement stated that the Council's Steering Committee had decided at its meeting on that date to institute legal action inthe domestic courts of States and other appropriate bodies, against corporations or individuals who were violating the Decree.

URENCO, the announcement stated, was a joint operation for uranium enrichment of the British state-owned company British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. (BNFL), the Federal Republic of Germany's private company URANIT and the Dutch state-owned company Ultra Centrifuge Nederland (UCN). URENCO had been enriching uranium from Namibia since 1980 for the nuclear power stations of Preussenelektra and Nordwestdeutsche Kraftwerke, subsidiaries of VEBA Aktien Gesellschaft, one of the largest firms of the Federal Republic of Germany.

According to the announcement, the Steering Committee's decision "culminates several years of research, studies and consultations carried out by the Council with a view to implementing the Decree", which it had enacted in 1974 and which expressly forbids any person or entity from searching for, prospecting for, exploring for, taking, extracting, mining, processing, refining, using, selling, exporting or distributing any natural resource, whether animal or mineral, situated or found to be situated within the territorial limits of Namibia without the Council's consent and permission.

The Steering Committee, said the announcement, had based its decisions on a report presented by the United Nations Commissioner for Namibia which described in detail the possibilities of instituting legal action in the courts of the Netherlands, Belgium, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. The Steering Committee emphasized that "this decision on legal action was only an initial step and one of the various options it intended to exercise in promoting the implementation of its Decree". The Commissioner for Namibia was being requested to immediately make appropriate arrangements to set in motion the institution of legal proceedings in the Netherlands.

A Council mission that had visited France, the Netherlands, the Federal Republic of Germany and the United Kingdom from 24 April to 12 May 1984 had recommended that because the Netherlands had fully recognized the Council's competence regarding the protection of Namibia's natural resources, it should be the starting point in Western Europe for any legal action to ensure compliance with the Decree. [For details of the mission's report (A/AC.131/133), see UN Chronicle 1984, No.5.]