UN Experts Raise Alarm: JSW Steel Project in Odisha Under Global Human Rights Scrutiny
In a significant intervention that underscores the growing global concern over corporate-led resource extraction in India, a group of United Nations Special Rapporteurs has issued a strongly worded communication to JSW Steel Ltd., flagging serious allegations of human rights violations linked to its proposed integrated steel plant in Odisha’s Jagatsinghpur district.
The letter dated 17 November 2025, sent under the UN Human Rights Council’s Special Procedures, points to potential violations affecting over 30,000 people—primarily Adivasis, forest dwellers, Dalits, and fishing communities—whose lives and livelihoods are deeply intertwined with the region’s
fragile coastal ecology. At stake are not only rights to food, water, health, and a clean environment, but also cultural survival and democratic participation.Raising concerns over forced displacement, denial of forest rights, and the erosion of free, prior and informed consent, the UN experts warn that the project risks repeating the unresolved injustices that led to the withdrawal of POSCO from the same site in 2017.
Below is the full Letter
Mandates of
the Special Rapporteur on the right to food; the Working Group on the
issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business
enterprises; the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights; the
Special Rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and
sustainable environment; the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and
protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression; the
Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of
association; the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights
defenders and the Working Group on the rights of peasants and other
people working in rural areas
Ref.: AL OTH 142/2025
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