Paris/Montrouge, December 10. To mark International Human Rights Day and right before the 10 years anniversary of the Paris Agreement, the collective Le Bruit Qui Court held an artistic mobilization this morning in front of the headquarter of Crédit Agricole – one of the biggest bank in France, calling on the bank to withdraw all financial support linked to the Mozambique LNG project. This mobilization stands as an international effort targeting the project’s financiers worldwide.
The Mozambique LNG project, spearheaded by TotalEnergies, is now the subject of a complaint filed by ECCHR(European Center for Constitutional Human Right) for complicity in war crimes, torture, and enforced disappearances. Total has been under criminal investigation by French courts since March 2025 on allegations of involuntary manslaughter and failure to assist a person in danger, both connected with the company’s activities in Mozambique. Despite these accusations, the consortium plans to restart the project.
Crédit Agricole is one of the ten biggest project financing banks of the world, meanwhile a prominent financial backers of Total’s Mozambique LNG in France. As human rights violations connected to the project come to light, two European financiers (UKEF from the UK and the Dutch government) have withdrawn from the scheme, demonstrating that disengagement is possible. Nevertheless, Crédit Agricole has yet to announce any plan to withdraw its financing for the project, putting themselves in serious moral, legal and reputational risk.
Mobilizations that took place on 10th were led by a series of choreography, sound and symbolic props, addressing the destructive impacts and human rights abuses of the project. Protesters performed a rewritten version of Anne Sylvestre’s song“Un Bateau mais Demain”, highlighting the pollution caused by LNG carriers, followed by a recorded text of a person with family in Mozambique, underscoring the project’s severe human-rights impacts. Finally, participants handed out 250 protest flyers folded into paper boats(as a symbolic number of the victims impacted by the project) to employees entering the bank’s headquarters, urging the bank to halt its financing of the project.
“The decision made by the UK government is the only correct one. It is possible for any financier to withdraw from a project and that is what Crédit Agricole needs to do! International Human Rights Day is an occasion to draw a line. Some projects linked to severe human rights violations must not be funded.” Ulysse Vassas, co-organizer of the mobilisation.
As investigations continue to substantiate the human-rights abuses associated with the Mozambique LNG project, actions against the project and its related companies are escalating worldwide. In May, a Mozambican civil society group and South Korean youth climate activists filed a lawsuit against two South Korean export-financing institutions for contributing approximately USD 1.8 billion to the Coral North floating LNG project in Mozambique. Later in October, civil society groups demonstrated outside Samsung Electronics’ headquarters in Seoul, highlighting the conglomerate’s involvement through more than USD 5 billion in project contracts.
Moreover, civil groups in Japan also issued an emergency statement urging the Japan Bank for International Cooperation(JBIC) and Nippon Export and Investment Insurance(NEXI) not to fill the financing gap left by the withdrawal of UK and Dutch export credit agencies. Together, these actions signal a clear and rising global demand for all institutions to end their support for the Mozambique LNG project.(Press release)
