Webinar: Introducing „Investing the Rights Way: A Guide for Investors on Business and Human Rights“
plus.google.com/110224629578476108273/posts/DHqzxNLMBW4
Business and human rights
business-humanrights.org/SpecialRepPortal/Home
United Nations Human Rights http://on.fb.me/17e9DOd
Corporations must be held accountable for human rights violations
ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/CorporationsMustBeHeldAccountableForHRViolations.aspx
The lawsuit, Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum (Shell), was brought in 2002 by 12 Nigerians who allege that the company “aided and abetted” the human rights violations committed against them by the Nigerian Government in the Ogoni region of the Niger Delta. Shell, through a Nigerian subsidiary, was involved in oil exploration and production in the region between 1992 and 1995, at the time the abuses allegedly occurred.
This case is one of several brought against Shell in relation to the violent suppression of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni people, a group campaigning for the rights of local people and protesting against pollution caused by oil companies. Nine of the Movement’s members, including its leader, well-known writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, were hanged in 1995 after being convicted of murder by a military tribunal. The executions of the ‘Ogoni nine’, as they are known globally, were condemned by governments and human rights activists around the world.
Since the Second World War and the Nuremberg war crimes trials, international law has held that human rights abuses can be prosecuted around the globe. A motion to have the original case dismissed on the grounds that it could more conveniently be heard in England was overturned, with the Court of Appeals ruling the United States was a proper forum because the defendants had an office in New York.
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