Main, Blog
Charity Ryerson
A New Global Minimum Tax on Corporations and ...

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.  

A New Global Minimum Tax on Corporations and Human Rights Implications
Main, Blog
Charity Ryerson
Un año desde la prohibición del azúcar del ...

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.

Un año desde la prohibición del azúcar del Central Romana en mercado EEUU por trabajo forzoso
Blog, Main
Charity Ryerson
One year since Central Romana sugar banned from ...

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. 

One year since Central Romana sugar banned from US market for forced labor
Avery Kelly
Enbridge and the Dangers of Extractive ...

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.

Enbridge and the Dangers of Extractive Industry-Police Alliances
Main
Avery Kelly
CAL & EarthRights Launch Updated Guide to ...

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 & EarthRights Launch Updated Guide to Foreign Legal Assistance Statute, Allowing Attorneys Suing Companies Access to Discovery Process in the US

Negotiations for the New UN Ocean Treaty: Why the Treaty Must Include Corporate Environmental and Human Rights Obligations

Negotiations for the New UN Ocean Treaty: Why the Treaty Must Include Corporate Environmental and Human Rights Obligations

A small group of corporations play an outsized role in exploiting marine animals in international waters. Estimates suggest that only thirteen seafood corporations account for up to 40% of the largest and most valuable fish catches worldwide. So far, decades old management measures to regulate fishing in international waters have failed to stem fish population declines. Meanwhile, dangerous working conditions, forced labor, trafficking, and other human rights abuses are alarmingly common onboard fishing and cargo vessels.

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CAL presenta amicus pidiendo que la Corte Suprema proteja la identidad de las victimas en Doe v. Chiquita

CAL presenta amicus pidiendo que la Corte Suprema proteja la identidad de las victimas en Doe v. Chiquita

Corporate Accountability Lab presentó un memorial de amicus curiae solicitando a la Corte Suprema de Estados Unidos que conceda el certiorari en el caso, Doe v. Chiquita Brands International. El caso fue presentado por los familiares de sindicalistas, trabajadores del sector bananero, organizadores políticos, activistas sociales y otras personas atacadas y asesinadas por las Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), una organización paramilitar de derecha en Colombia financiada en parte por Chiquita, la empresa bananera multinacional con sede en Estados Unidos. Los demandantes han interpuesto una querella contra Chiquita, alegando que Chiquita fue cómplice de las AUC financiándolas.

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Honoring Berta Cáceres and her Vision for Indigenous Liberation in Honduras

Honoring Berta Cáceres and her Vision for Indigenous Liberation in Honduras

Berta Cáceres Flores is the “seed of freedom” for her indigenous Lenca people of Honduras and all who pay tribute to her legacy by continuing her struggle for indigenous liberation. Cáceres’s assassination near midnight on March 3, 2016 was orchestrated by employees at the hydroelectric dam company Desarrollos Energéticos (DESA), after Cáceres and her community disrupted the dam’s construction on their ancestral lands and sacred Gualcarque river. Just this week, over five years later, the former head of DESA was convicted for her murder.

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CAL Files Amicus Brief Asking Supreme Court to Protect Victims' Identities in Doe v. Chiquita

CAL Files Amicus Brief Asking Supreme Court to Protect Victims' Identities in Doe v. Chiquita

Corporate Accountability Lab filed an amicus brief on behalf of a group of human rights organizations, asking the US Supreme Court to grant certiorari in the case Doe v. Chiquita. The case was brought by the family members of trade unionists, banana workers, political organizers, social activists, and others targeted and killed by the United Self-Defense Group of Colombia (AUC), a right-wing paramilitary organization in Colombia funded in part by Chiquita.

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CAL and IRAdvocates Provide New Evidence of Forced Child Labor in the Cocoa Sector in Wake of Supreme Court Decision in Nestle v. Doe

CAL and IRAdvocates Provide New Evidence of Forced Child Labor in the Cocoa Sector in Wake of Supreme Court Decision in Nestle v. Doe

On June 24, 2021, Corporate Accountability Lab (CAL) and International Rights Advocates (IRAdvocates) submitted new evidence of forced child labor and trafficking in the Ivorian cocoa sector to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) under Section 307 of the Tariff Act. This evidence was submitted as a supplement to a 307 petition we filed almost a year and a half ago, in February 2020. In both petitions we request that CBP issue a Withhold Release Order (WRO) to stop the importation of all cocoa and chocolate produced with forced child labor from Cote d’Ivoire.


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CBP Issues WRO Targeting Silica-Based Products Used in Solar Panels By Hoshine Silicon Industry Co., Ltd.

CBP Issues WRO Targeting Silica-Based Products Used in Solar Panels By Hoshine Silicon Industry Co., Ltd.

On June 24, 2021, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued a Withhold Release Order (WRO) stopping imports into the US of silica-based products produced in whole or in part by the Chinese company Hoshine Silicon Industry Co., Ltd., located in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). The WRO comes as a result of CBP’s findings that Hoshine uses forced labor in its silica-based product factories, building upon a wave of recent reports of human rights abuses in corporate supply chains in Xinjiang.

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COCOBOD’s Unrealised Potential: Promoting Human Rights, Welfare, and the Environment in Ghana’s Cocoa-Growing Communities

COCOBOD’s Unrealised Potential: Promoting Human Rights, Welfare, and the Environment in Ghana’s Cocoa-Growing Communities

On June 17, 2021, Corporate Accountability Lab joined the University of Ghana School of Law, the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Center for International Human Rights, and SEND Ghana to launch the report, COCOBOD’s Unrealised Potential: Promoting Human Rights, Welfare, and the Environment in Ghana’s Cocoa-Growing Communities.

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Supreme Court Upholds Intolerable Status Quo in Nestlé USA v. Doe, Rejecting Claims of Trafficked Children

Supreme Court Upholds Intolerable Status Quo in Nestlé USA v. Doe, Rejecting Claims of Trafficked Children

On June 17, 2021, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in Nestlé USA v. Doe, a case brought on behalf of six Malian plaintiffs who had been trafficked and forced to work on cocoa farms in Cote d’Ivoire. The former forced child laborers allege that they had been tortured and enslaved. They further alleged that Nestlé USA and Cargill aided and abetted the harms against them by providing financial and technical support for exclusive purchasing rights to farms it knew or should have known exploited children.

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Shell Shocked: Dutch Court Rules that Shell Must Reduce CO2 Emissions by 45% by 2030

Shell Shocked: Dutch Court Rules that Shell Must Reduce CO2 Emissions by 45% by 2030

While 100 companies are responsible for nearly three-fourths of global emissions contributing to climate change, governments have historically lacked the tools--or political will-- to effectively mitigate corporate contributions to climate change, even those that fossil fuel companies make.

However, a new ruling by a Dutch court may force change for corporate accountability on climate change.

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El legado de Valmore Locarno, Víctor Orcasita y Gustavo Soler: 20 años en búsqueda de  verdad y justicia en un entorno de conflicto armado

El legado de Valmore Locarno, Víctor Orcasita y Gustavo Soler: 20 años en búsqueda de  verdad y justicia en un entorno de conflicto armado

En marzo de 2021 se cumplieron 20 años de los asesinatos de los líderes sindicales Valmore Locarno y Víctor Orcasita a manos de miembros paramilitares colombianos de las Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), supuestamente financiados, en parte, por la empresa de carbón Drummond Co., la cual tiene su casa matriz en Alabama, Estados Unidos.

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Fair Trade USA & The Failures of Eco-Social Certification 

Fair Trade USA & The Failures of Eco-Social Certification 

When we choose to purchase a product that bears a certification label-- like a yogurt with a fair trade stamp-- we may assume that the workers and environment along the supply chain were respected in the product’s development. But the social auditing and certification industry behind such certifications do not always have the impacts we might think. Fair Trade USA’s recently-launched Certified Dairy label is an example of how social auditing and certification programs that are not worker-driven all too often end up as greenwashing and/or fairwashing schemes and fail the workers they are meant to protect.

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Why a Whole Country Went on Strike - And is Still Striking

Why a Whole Country Went on Strike - And is Still Striking

Although the Colombian government’s proposed tax reform ignited the protests that started all over the country on April 29, the motives behind the ongoing national strike are diverse. This is why, when President Duque announced that he was going to withdraw the tax reform from Congress five days after protests began, the strike didn’t stop.

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Hamida Begum v. Maran (UK) Limited: Shipbreaker’s Death Turning the Tide in Third-Party Liability Claims Under English Law

Hamida Begum v. Maran (UK) Limited: Shipbreaker’s Death Turning the Tide in Third-Party Liability Claims Under English Law

While large shipping vessels are meant to last for years, all vessels eventually reach the end of their working lives. These vessels must then be dismantled, a process known as shipbreaking. Maran, a UK-based company, sold a shipping vessel to a demolition cash buyer to have its shipping vessel demolished. This post focuses on a decision issued by the Court of Appeals for England and Wales on March 20, 2021, against Maran’s appeal of the trial court’s decision denying Maran’s application for reverse summary judgment.

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In Support of Environmental & Human Rights Defender Jani Silva

In Support of Environmental & Human Rights Defender Jani Silva

Colombian Human Rights and Environmental Defender Jani Rita Silva and her organization, the Asociación de Desarrollo Integral Sostenible Perla Amazónica (ADISPA), have recently received threats challenging their work to defend the Campesino Reserve of the Amazon Pearl of Putumayo, Colombia from corporate abuse.

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Valmore Locarno, Victor Orcasita and Gustavo Soler’s legacy - a 20-year relentless pursuit of truth and justice in an armed-conflict setting

Valmore Locarno, Victor Orcasita and Gustavo Soler’s legacy - a 20-year relentless pursuit of truth and justice in an armed-conflict setting

March 2021 marked the 20th anniversary of the killings of union leaders Valmore Locarno and Victor Orcasita at the hands of Colombian paramilitary members from the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), allegedly funded, in part, by Alabama-based coal company Drummond Co.

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Escazú: el llamado para proteger a líderes y lideresas ambientales en el Día de la Tierra

Escazú: el llamado para proteger a líderes y lideresas ambientales en el Día de la Tierra

En 2019, dos tercios de los asesinatos a defensores del medio ambiente en todo el mundo tuvieron lugar en América Latina. Esta tendencia no es nueva. En la última década, las comunidades que defienden sus tierras ancestrales y ecosistemas altamente biodiversos en esta región han sido consistentemente las más afectadas a nivel mundial: entre 2009 y 2019 se registraron al menos dos mil eventos victimizantes contra hombres y mujeres y doscientos contra organizaciones que defienden el medio ambiente y la tierra.

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Amazon’s Working Conditions in Alabama are the Tip of the Iceberg

Amazon’s Working Conditions in Alabama are the Tip of the Iceberg

In a 2019 segment on working conditions in Amazon’s eerily named “fulfillment centers,” Comedian John Oliver gave the world’s largest e-commerce company the brilliant faux-tagline: “Amazon: try not to think about it.” But as the world watched the historic unionization drive at an Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama unfold over the last several months, ending with a defeat to the organizers earlier this month, the reality of Amazon's labor practices have become harder to ignore.

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Biden Administration Executive Order on Supply Chains is an Opportunity to Fight Forced Labor

Biden Administration Executive Order on Supply Chains is an Opportunity to Fight Forced Labor

In February 2021, just a month after taking office, President Biden issued an Executive Order (EO) aimed at increasing the resilience of US supply chains. The EO instructs the heads of numerous agencies, including the Departments of Commerce, Defense, Health and Human Services and Energy, to conduct a 100-day review of supply chain risks related to such goods as semiconductors, batteries, minerals and other rare earth elements, and pharmaceuticals.

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Introducing Our New Staff Attorney Samee Haque, and And Why IP Law is the Perfect Bridge Between Ethics and Tech

Introducing Our New Staff Attorney Samee Haque, and And Why IP Law is the Perfect Bridge Between Ethics and Tech

CAL is continuing to expand its presence in the IP space with the addition of our newest staff attorney, Sameeul Haque. In this introductory blog, Samee discusses CAL’s work with Ethical Source, an organization dedicated to empowering those in the open source tech community to exercise their rights as developers to ensure that their software is used for social good and in service of human rights. You can reach Samee by email at sameeul@corpaccountabilitylab.org.

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Pourquoi nous avons créé un laboratoire social sur la responsabilité des entreprises en matière de justice transitionnelle

Pourquoi nous avons créé un laboratoire social sur la responsabilité des entreprises en matière de justice transitionnelle

En collaboration avec l’African Coalition for Corporate Accountability (ACCA), la Comisión Intereclesial de Justicia y Paz (CIJP) et Dejusticia, CAL a récemment lancé le Laboratoire sur la Responsabilité des Entreprises pour une Paix Durable (Laboratoire CLASP, pour son acronym en anglais), un laboratoire social dont l'objectif est de faire progresser la responsabilité des entreprises dans les contextes post-conflictuels et transitoires du monde

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