The much anticipated one-day Climate Summit 2014 took place this Tuesday, September 23 at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York, marking the international community’s latest effort to address climate change. Hosted by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Climate Summit 2014 aimed to engage world leaders and encourage international action to slow climate change. Governments at the Summit were expected
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In a new attempt to hold transnational corporations accountable for human rights violations, the United Nations Human Rights Council has decided to establish a working group to prepare a treaty imposing international human rights legal obligations on transnational corporations. [OHCHR Press Release] The mandate of the working group will be to “elaborate an international legally binding instrument to regulate, in
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Liberian farmers, charcoal producers and workers are seeking redress before the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) for the economic, social and environmental harms allegedly caused by a development project in which OPIC invested. OPIC, a United States governmental agency that provides financial assistance to development projects abroad, backed Buchanan Renewables’ plans to build a biomass power plant in Liberia and
Read moreAt the time of their establishment, international human rights instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the international covenants on civil and political rights and on economic, social, and cultural rights were intended to hold States accountable to mutually agreed principles. However, the international community’s understanding of human rights has gradually evolved to recognize that although only countries formally sign on to treaties,
Read moreThe Secretariat of the United Nations Human Rights Council* is seeking all governments, national human rights institutes, and non-governmental organizations in consultative status to nominate persons to serve as the Chairperson of the upcoming Forum on Business and Human Rights.
Read moreFamily members of Iraqi civilians killed by Blackwater security contractors in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square in 2007 have agreed to a settlement offered by Academi, Blackwater’s successor (also recently known as Xe Services). [Washington Post] On September 16, 2007, Blackwater employees guarding U.S. diplomats opened fire into a crowd, killing seventeen Iraqi civilians in what was alleged by prosecutors to be
Read moreIn Canada, the Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group – a group of First Nations communities in British Columbia – has requested precautionary measures from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, seeking to stop the sale of their historic land to the provincial and Canadian governments by a logging corporation. [Canada.com; Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group] The request alleges that the Canadian government has failed
Read moreEleven Falun Gong practitioners have filed suit against computer networking company Cisco Systems for allegedly facilitating human rights abuses by the Chinese government against Falun Gong members, by developing and providing Internet surveillance technology known as Golden Shield or Policenet. [Wall Street Pit] The suit, filed by the Human Rights Law Foundation in the U.S. District Court for the Northern
Read moreNPR reports that controversial Arizona immigration law S.B. 1070 was drafted and lobbied for in significant part by the private prison industry, through conservative organization the American Legislative Exchange Council, which brings together members of industry and politicians, including Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Arizona State Sen. Russell Pearce. [Salt Lake City Weekly] CCA, the country’s largest private prison
Read moreThe loss of leading international human rights scholar Louis Henkin is mourned, while the legal community remembers his long career dedicated to the development of international law and the protection of human rights. [Human Rights First] Moldova has ratified the Rome Statute to become the newest State Party to the International Criminal Court, bringing the total to 114. [UN] Canadian
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