Stop-Pillage is a coalition of organisations, groups and individuals. We oppose the North’s system of capturing the wealth of the South and its disastrous human and environmental consequences.
Every year, the Financial Times Commodities Global Summit brings together the heads of the world’s leading trading companies and representatives of the financial and banking sectors at the Beau-Rivage Palace in Lausanne. To mark the occasion, Stop-Pillage is organising a counter-summit (14-16 March) to denounce the systematic plundering of resources in the Global South. We call on all those who reject these injustices to mobilise, to remind everyone that the comfort of a few cannot continue to be built on the destruction of others. The fight against globalised capitalism and extractivism legitimised on racist grounds is a fight for a world where natural resources serve people and not profits.
Our Western lifestyles, synonymous with comfort, are largely based on extractivism and the exploitation of natural and human resources. From the telephone we use to electric toothbrushes, bicycles and everyday products such as coffee and sugar, much of what we consume comes from raw materials sourced in the Global South. These resources are extracted or cultivated in inhumane conditions, fuelling supply chains that impoverish local populations while destroying their ecosystems. This insatiable growth model is even reflected in the so-called ‘green’ energy transition, which requires ever more resources. Lithium, essential for electric car batteries, is a case in point: its extraction in Chile consumes 400,000 litres of water per hour, destroying ecosystems and threatening populations already hit by drought. The quest for a healthy environment in the West thus relocates pollution and impacts, perpetuating a system in which the populations of the periphery of the global North, the majority of whom are non-white, pay the price for our comfort and our refusal to change our consumption model. So we have a collective responsibility not to look the other way, but to take responsibility and act to denounce these injustices and help build a fairer world based on solidarity.
Capitalism, which is intrinsically extractivist and racialised, allows multinationals and their shareholders to make colossal profits by exploiting raw materials that are essential to our daily lives. In Switzerland, a global trading centre, resources such as gold, coal and oil are traded en masse, generating huge profits without ever touching Swiss soil. For example, Glencore, a Zug-based multinational active in the Democratic Republic of Congo, saw its profits rise from 1.2 billion to 12 billion dollars between 2021 and 2022, while being responsible for serious human rights violations. In the DRC, the company has facilitated fraudulent mining transactions, often linked to corrupt practices, contributing to large-scale massacres. Its activities have exacerbated poverty, caused environmental destruction and fuelled a cycle of suffering for local populations already weakened by precarious living conditions and systemic violence. This model illustrates a system of wealth hoarding to the detriment of the populations of the South, whose natural resources are plundered without any real compensation, fuelling an ecological crisis that is leading to massive displacements and the creation of climate refugees.
In this context, climate justice becomes inextricable from political crises where systematic violence further aggravates global injustice and the precariousness of populations.
The genocide in Gaza and extractivism in the DRC, crises that reflect a neo-colonial system, illustrate a regime of death in which the lives of whites are privileged, while those of non-whites are reduced to suffering and exploitation, in the service of the development and enrichment of Western countries. This system is based on systematic dehumanisation, transforming human lives into exploitable ‘resources’. In Gaza, for example, the reduction of Palestinians to an imaginary animality serves to justify their annihilation, establishing a radical separation between the Human and the ‘Other’. This mechanism, intrinsic to racism, feeds domination by excluding entire peoples from humanity. This imperialist logic, which legitimises oppression and violence, must be deconstructed in order to recognise the intrinsic value of every life and achieve true equality. In this context, players like Glencore, involved in a global cartel facilitating coal exports to Israel, are contributing directly to the genocidal crimes against the Palestinian people. Meanwhile, trading companies are prospering from these crises and boosting Swiss GDP.The 14th international commodities trading summit, scheduled to take place in Lausanne from 24 to 26 March 2025, is the epitome of this dynamic: leaders of multinationals, bankers and financiers are devising strategies to make even more profit from these upheavals.
Stop-Pillage, a coalition of committed groups, organisations and individuals, is opposed to the imperialisms of the 20th century. Swiss companies benefit directly from this system through the massive exploitation of foreign labour and the repatriation of profits made by their subsidiaries, as do the banks, which receive fortunes from the elites of the South, thus diverting tax resources that are vital for financing the needs of the people. We denounce the active complicity of the Swiss authorities, who offer multinationals a tax haven with little regulation and opacity that encourages exploitation. Our demands are clear: we are calling for an end to extractivism, the symbol of racial capitalism, the dismantling of the Swiss trading giants and the Swiss tax haven, recognition of the right of peoples to control their own resources, and an economic model based on social and climate justice.
Join our fight!