This year, states will begin implementing a global minimum tax rate of fifteen percent on multinational corporations with more than €750 million (about $810 million) in revenues. If these tax reforms succeed in increasing tax revenues across the approximately 140 implementing countries as they intend, these additional funds could be used to advance the social and economic rights of their citizens, especially for the most vulnerable populations, including those whose rights have been abused by corporations historically. However, the coming tax reforms are still so riddled with gray areas regarding form and function that it is too early to call the initiative a victory in corporate accountability.
Durante los 365 días desde que se bloqueó la entrada de su azúcar a los Estados Unidos por trabajo forzoso, el Central Romana ha optado por implementar sólo cambios superficiales para los cañeros y utilizar estrategias políticas en un aparente intento de hacer desaparecer la WRO.
Over the 365 days since its sugar was blocked from entering the United States, Central Romana has chosen to implement only superficial changes for workers while pulling political strings in an apparent effort to make the import ban disappear.
Last month, The Guardian revealed that Canadian pipeline company Enbridge has paid Minnesota police more than two and a half million dollars for services including the surveillance and arrest of Water Protectors resisting the company’s construction of a new Line 3 pipeline. This post situates the Enbridge-police agreement in Minnesota and violent crackdown against Water Protectors at Line 3 within a disturbing global context rooted in colonialism.
In 2019, CAL partnered with EarthRights International to update their Guide to the Foreign Legal Assistance statute. Given that the US is an increasingly difficult jurisdiction for transnational human rights cases against companies, this tool provides an opportunity for workers and community members to access key evidence located in the US even where they may not have been able to bring suit there.
CAL is excited to introduce our newest staff attorney, Tatiana Devia. In this introductory blog, Tatiana discusses CAL’s work related to Transitional Justice in Colombia, and how the Colombian armed conflict has played a role in her own story. You can reach Tatiana by email at tatiana.devia@corpaccountabilitylab.org.
On Friday, the Canadian Supreme Court announced its decision on jurisdiction in Nevsun Resources Ltd. v. Araya, in which a Canadian company is being sued for alleged violations of Customary International Law (CIL) in the East African country of Eritrea. Global human rights and international law advocates are applauding this major decision, finding that CIL is part of Canadian law, even where the legislature has taken no action to codify it domestically.
The Ivorian cocoa industry, which produces over 30% of the world’s cocoa, is notoriously rife with child labor. For years companies such as Nestlé, Mars, Hershey, and Cargill have promised to make real changes and eliminate child labor in their supply chains. And yet, despite these promises, little has changed.
On Monday, January 27, 2020, twenty-four men, women, and children sued the Central Romana Corporation and its parent company, the Fanjul Corporation, in U.S. district court for the companies’ forcible eviction of their homes in the Dominican Republic in January 2016.
It’s Nearly Impossible To Buy Chocolate You Can Feel Good About
A lot of you have been asking for our recommendations on what chocolate to buy this Halloween, given the fact that forced labor and environmental abuse are so rampant in the cocoa sector. We wish we had better news.
The sad and hard truth is that there is very little chocolate that is truly sourced ethically (and don’t get me started on the labor and environmental issues related to sugar and palm oil production, both key ingredients in Halloween candy).
This Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we are reflecting on the steadfast nonviolent struggle of the indigenous Ogoni people in Nigeria and the human rights and environmental abuse they have suffered at the hands of the Nigerian government and Shell (Royal Dutch Shell’s subsidiary Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC)).
No, Mars doesn’t have to tell you their chocolate was made using slave labor. But, can consumer protection laws be used to stop corporations from committing human rights abuses? Despite setbacks, over the past twenty years creative human and civil rights attorneys have had some success using consumer protection laws to compel corporate transparency related to supply chain labor exploitation.
The largest garment industrial accident in Savar, Dhaka killed 1,134 garment labourers and injured approximately 2,500 garment labour. After the collapse in 2013, international pressure grew and two large groups of Brands/retailers formed unique transnational initiatives in order to address the safety problems of Bangladeshi garment labourers.
Part I of this blog analyzed the extraterritorial application of the “Hot Goods” provision of the FLSA). This post discusses whether the remaining provisions of the FLSA can be applied overseas. The short and sweet answer is rarely. The extraterritorial application of the FLSA is technically not prohibited, but its usability depends on very narrow facts. To better understand the FLSA’s extraterritorial application, we need to dig into its history.
This blog post is Part I of a two-part series exploring the viability of using the FLSA’s “Hot Goods” provision as a tool to increase accountability for egregious labor violations in supply chains. Here at CAL, we focus on international supply chains primarily, but we start this post with an overview of how the “Hot Goods” provision has been applied within the US. Next, we look at the possibility of extraterritorial application to hold actors in international supply chains accountable.
Just under a month ago, my friend Ola Bini was arrested at the airport Quito, Ecuador. Ola, a man whose name inconveniently sounds like “hello” in his adopted home, is a data privacy advocate and widely-recognized tech savant. Sometimes he paints his nails black and he likes that really terrible, dry science fiction--the kind where it’s all science and no character development. But I can forgive him that because he’s a sweet person, generous with his time and expertise, and a zealous but ethical advocate for the human right to privacy.
When I describe CAL’s work to other millennial lawyers, they often tell me “I’m just not that creative.” But these self-identified uncreatives spend their days solving complex problems in sophisticated, nuanced ways. Is this intelligence, but not creativity? What is creativity anyway, and are we born with it, or not?
CAL creates outside-the-box legal mechanisms that give motivated individuals the ability to promote human rights norms by enforcing their own rights.
I knew Charity, the Legal Director and co-founder of CAL, professionally for years. During law school, I spent a summer in DC for an internship, and one night I caught a glimpse of what would become CAL. Charity and some of her law school friends (one of whom would be CAL’s other co-founder) were sitting around brainstorming ideas for legal innovations for corporate accountability.
14 manufacturers. 178 factories across the globe. New rights for thousands of workers and affected communities. This is the initial result of Corporate Accountability Lab’s new test case, showing the potential to revolutionize the way companies do business, and to benefit millions of workers and affected communities producing for the US market.
This week, the AP reported that an estimated one million people, mostly Chinese Muslims, were being held in just one of multiple internment camps in the Xinjiang region of China, and producing sportswear for the US market. Here we lay out four key facts about this case that show how “business as usual” has failed to protect workers and the environment on a massive scale.
This week, we’re lighting candles for a speedy recovery since Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s fall and fractured ribs on November 7, 2018. RBG’s reputation as a brilliant jurist, women’s rights advocate, and overall spicy human is widely appreciated. Just admit it: you wish you were RBG. You’re even jealous of her work out.
Here at Corporate Accountability Lab, we focus on global supply chains. We talk about forced labor in China and poverty wages in Bangladesh. We talk about workers producing for the US market who lack the most basic protections. And we do this as attorneys, with top notch educations, leveraging the power of our privilege to fight for human rights and the environment. But I’m going to get personal here.
Earlier this year, advocates and tech workers successfully lobbied Google to abandon a project with the Pentagon, code-named “Project Maven.” Google’s role in the project was to provide artificial intelligence (AI) that would analyze massive amounts of surveillance data for drones. I imagine if you did a survey of human reactions to enlisting artificial intelligence to figure out who to kill with a drone, the average person would check the box next to “dystopic hellscape.”
There has been some speculation about whether anti-dumping statutes could be put to good use in a human rights context. This speculation stems in part from a case filed in 2004 by the Southern Shrimp Alliance at the International Trade Commission (ITC), challenging the alleged dumping of Thai shrimp (notoriously forced-labor produced). While the shrimp case (discussed further below) did not specifically allege forced labor, it raised the question of whether anti-dumping claims could be used to challenge forced labor and other widespread abuses that suppress the consumer price of various imports.
