Stemming the Flow of Corporate Human Rights Abuses: Incorporating the Ruggie Report in the Common Law Doctrine of Foreign Judgment Enforcement

<p>The eminent case of Aguinda v Chevron Corporation, currently in its twentieth year of litigation, represents a growing phenomenon in international commercial litigation between multinational corporations and victims of human rights abuse from developing nations. In 2011 Aguinda awarded approximately US$18 billion against Chevron for extreme environmental and human rights abuse from oil contamination in the Amazon region of Ecuador. Chevron has removed its assets from Ecuador’s jurisdiction leaving the plaintiffs without remedy. This paper traces Aguinda to Canada where the plaintiffs’ action in Yaiguaje to enforce the judgment to satisfy their debt is stayed. This paper critiques this decision of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice as being unprincipled and failing to consider the wider implications of its decision on the struggle for developing nations to remedy human rights abuses by multinational corporations. This paper argues that the common law doctrine of foreign judgment enforcement must evolve to reflect the needs of modern society. The paper does this by incorporating the “Protect, Respect and Remedy: A Framework for Business and Human Rights” report released by the United Nations in 2011.</p>

Stemming the Flow of Corporate Human Rights Abuses: Incorporating the Ruggie Report in the Common Law Doctrine of Foreign Judgment Enforcement

<p>The eminent case of Aguinda v Chevron Corporation, currently in its twentieth year of litigation, represents a growing phenomenon in international commercial litigation between multinational corporations and victims of human rights abuse from developing nations. In 2011 Aguinda awarded approximately US$18 billion against Chevron for extreme environmental and human rights abuse from oil contamination in the Amazon region of Ecuador. Chevron has removed its assets from Ecuador’s jurisdiction leaving the plaintiffs without remedy. This paper traces Aguinda to Canada where the plaintiffs’ action in Yaiguaje to enforce the judgment to satisfy their debt is stayed. This paper critiques this decision of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice as being unprincipled and failing to consider the wider implications of its decision on the struggle for developing nations to remedy human rights abuses by multinational corporations. This paper argues that the common law doctrine of foreign judgment enforcement must evolve to reflect the needs of modern society. The paper does this by incorporating the “Protect, Respect and Remedy: A Framework for Business and Human Rights” report released by the United Nations in 2011.</p>

Gender Equality and Empowerment through Corporate Social Responsibility in Ecotourism at Malealea, Lesotho: A Qualitative Study

Corporate Social responsibility (CSR) has been widely discussed since the end of the first half of the 21st century. In the 1950s, CSR focused on the demand for social responsibility for business in general but towards the end of the century, diverse issues had emerged ranging from concerns about environmental sustainability, human rights abuse and business sustainability. Gender issues were later taken on board. Companies are taking initiatives to improve gender issues at the workplace, community and marketplace. Guidelines and benchmarks have been developed to mainstream gender issues in CSR. However, a limited focus has been given to CSR in ecotourism especially as it relates to equality and empowerment. This exploratory study reports findings on how Malealea lodge through Malealea Development Trust has been dealing with gender issues in its CSR initiatives in Lesotho. Using interviews with the lodge management, employees and the beneficiaries of the CSR initiatives, findings suggested that the lodge did not have a formal gender policy, gender issues were addressed at various levels and the corporate social responsibility initiatives had empowering effects on both women and men. Keywords: CSR, empowerment, ecotourism, gender, Lesotho

Human Rights Litigation against Multinational Companies in Germany

Miriam Saag-Maaβ‎ reviews the potential for human rights and environmental cases against multinationals in Germany. Outlining the rules on jurisdiction as per EU and national law. The chapter discusses the application of the Rome II Regulation to choice of law and the potential relevance of overriding mandatory provisions of German law and the possibility of claims for impairment or interference with property including the injunctive relief to prevent flooding caused by greenhouse emissions in Lliaya v. RWE. It also outlines the elements for liability for corporate human rights abuse under section 823(I) BGB and for the omission to comply with safety duties, in particular the potential for claims against a parent or buying company for breach of a safety duty by subsidiaries and suppliers. It considers key issues arising in Jabbir v. KiK, including the application of the Pakistani law and outlines key barriers to justice relating to discovery, collective actions, recovery of legal costs and funding.

Measuring Human Rights Abuse from Access to Information Requests

Existing measures of human rights abuses are often only available at the country-year level. Several more fine-grained measures exhibit spatio-temporal inaccuracies or reporting biases due to the primary sources upon which they rely. To address these challenges, and to increase the diversity of available human rights measures more generally, this study provides the first quantitative effort to measure human rights abuses from textual records of citizen-government interactions. Using a dataset encompassing over 1.5 million access-to-information (ATI) requests made to the Mexican federal government from June 2003 onward, supervised classification is used to identify the subset of these requests that pertain to human rights abuses of various types. The results from this supervised machine learning exercise are validated against (i) gold standard ATI requests pertaining to past human rights abuses in Mexico and (ii) several accepted external measures of sub-national and sub-annual human rights abuses. In doing so, we demonstrate that the measurement of human rights abuses from citizen-submitted ATI request texts can provide measures of human rights abuse that exhibit both high validity and notable spatio-temporal specificity, relative to existent human rights datasets and variables.

Internal Conflict Displacement Galore in the Horn of Africa: Ethiopia on the Radar

Generally, the world has enjoyed relative peace and stability after the Cold War in 1991, but never the end to insecurity, conflicts, and wars (interstate and intrastate). One outcome of these insecurities is conflictinduced internal displacement. Though not new, its prevalence in recent times has become a hurdle that countries and the international community must reckon with. In fact, conflict-IDPs globally has received about 215 percent hikes in the last two decades, while in Africa, the increase is about 135 percent. However, the Horn of Africa is the hardest hit. As such, the paper provides an overview of conflict displacement and explores the conditions that sustains it, using Ethiopia as a unit of analysis. The paper found several conditions: constitutional, socio-psycho-cultural, political, economic, and human rights abuse as critical to conflict-IDPs deepening. The article further shows the trends of IDPs and its security implications for Ethiopia. Pragmatic solutions have been recommended accordingly.

Internal Conflict Displacement Galore in the Horn of Africa: Ethiopia on the Radar

Generally, the world has enjoyed relative peace and stability after the Cold War in 1991, but never the end to insecurity, conflicts, and wars (interstate and intrastate). One outcome of these insecurities is conflictinduced internal displacement. Though not new, its prevalence in recent times has become a hurdle that countries and the international community must reckon with. In fact, conflict-IDPs globally has received about 215 percent hikes in the last two decades, while in Africa, the increase is about 135 percent. However, the Horn of Africa is the hardest hit. As such, the paper provides an overview of conflict displacement and explores the conditions that sustains it, using Ethiopia as a unit of analysis. The paper found several conditions: constitutional, socio-psycho-cultural, political, economic, and human rights abuse as critical to conflict-IDPs deepening. The article further shows the trends of IDPs and its security implications for Ethiopia. Pragmatic solutions have been recommended accordingly.

Negotiation for a free belonging: Home and human rights in Bhattarai’s Registän Diary

Home and human rights appear as interwined categories in narratives related to migration. However, these two categories have not been amply explored as proximate matters in any migration related texts such as Registän Diary. Home is not only a place for dwelling with varying frameworks but also many other things like a space, a feeling and a will to belong. Having a home, a place to dwell and belong, is one of the basic rights of human, specifically in line with the view that human rights are rights held by individuals simply because they are part of the human species regardless of their sex, race, nationality, and economic background. In this paper, the researcher, remaining within the paradigm of qualitative research, draws ideas from the scholars alike Pico Iyer, Salman Rushdie, Shalley Mallet, Lynn Hunt, Joseph R. Slaughter, examines the life narratives of the labour migrants to the Gulf from Nepal, argues and concludes that be it through the multifaceted depiction of home or cases of human rights abuse, Registän Diary negotiates a free belonging for all the citizens in a secure world.

China in Africa: Exploring the Dividends and the Challenges

The study examined China’s presence in Africa, the warm reception it has received from African states into the continent, the benefits Africa stands to gain from the relationship as well as other emerging issues. In order to arrive at a reliable outcome, the work utilized descriptive research design and obtained data from secondary sources such as textbooks, journals, research articles, magazines, newspaper, the internet, etc. While the analysis of the data was enhanced through the tool of content analysis, the linkage approach, which emphasizes the important connection between the domestic factor and the states actions and decisions at the international scene, was adopted as framework for the study. In all, the findings suggested that there are a lot of benefits accruing to Africa as a result of its relation with China. These were highlighted and discussed under various headings covering investment, training and technology transfer, scholarship, free interest loans, forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCA), job creation and skill acquisition. The study also pointed out the flip sides of China’s engagement in Africa. These issues, which are also emerging, include: human right abuse, Job loss due to competition, spying accusation and loss of confidence in China, wrong political influence and the piling up of debt traps through interest free loans. Some recommendations were made to ensure that both parties – China and Africa- mutually benefit from this engagement. Thus: Efforts should be made to sustain the relationship in such a way that both sides can benefit mutually. This could be attained by being opened and transparent in all the dealings by both parties; African states should seize the current opportunity of their engagement with China to develop their needed infrastructure and acquire the necessary skills and knowledge for their economic and industrial growth because delay may be dangerous; China should write its name in the annals of African technological breakthrough history by genuinely transfer more technology to African for self-reliance and development; All the issues considered as flip side in this study must be looked into, especially the issues of human rights abuse, wrong political influence and piling up of debt for the unborn generations; Finally, we believe that there is no engagement anywhere in the world that is devoid of issues but the ability to resolve them is what defines the texture and the contour of such engagement. Therefore, they must work hard to settle any issue that may arise between them, including the spying allegation leveled against China.

State Repression and Democratic Dispensation in Uganda 1996–2016

State repression covers several and many aspects such as wrongful detention, harassment, intimidation, torture, beating, and killings within state boundaries. This study adopted a desk survey qualitative research design to document state repression acts during five presidential elections. Secondary and primary data were gathered from Uganda Electoral Commission presidential elections results, African Elections Database, and Inter-Parliamentary Parline database. This was augmented by interviews carried out with purposively selected political activists from different political shades and members of civil society organizations. The data collected from documentary reviews and interviews were thematically analyzed using the content analysis method. The findings were that successive presidential elections won by National Resistance Movement (NRM) were characterized by state repression acts amounting to human rights abuse such as torture, denial of political gatherings, wrongful arrest, and detention, intimidation, and killings. Drawing from the study findings, the conclusion is that NRM has used state institutions to repress opposition to shield its regime and to lure mass support to remain in power, undermining democratic dispensation it restored in the country.