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Corporations and Human Rights
Corporations and Human Rights:
Mining activities across the globe violate the fundamental rights of disadvantaged groups including indigenous people, women, children, workers and local communities. There are major gaps in domestic and international legal regimes that allow corporations to evade responsiblity or accountabilty for human rights violations.
Mining and extractive industry companies have been responsible for some of the more disturbing corporate human rights violations worldwide. Some of the more notorious examples are the operations of Shell in Nigeria, and the Ok Tedi and Bouganville mines in Papua New Guinea. Mining and extractive industries are frequently at the forefront of corporate globalisation.
Recently Australian mining companies have been linked to human rights violations from Columbia to Indonesia. The international human rights regime has been slow to respond to the growing political and economic power of corporations and the failure of current structures to prevent or redress their violations of international recognised human rights standards.
Efforts have been made at domestic and international levels to address this inbalance in the rights and responsiblities of corporations that have the potential to even up the balance between corporations and communities.
Find out more about
- The United Nations Norms on the Human Rights Obligations of Transnational Companies and other Business Enterprises
Extraterritorial legislation such as
- The "Corporate Codes of Conduct Bill' proposed in Australia
- The Alien Torts Claims Act in the United States
The UN Norms on the Obligations of Corporations, which are the most authoritative statement on the application of existing human rights standards to the operations of corporations.
MPI's submission to the United Nations Office of the Comissioner for Human Rights can be found elsewhere on this website.
Human Rights, Mining and the Australian Government:
Countries such as Australia have agreed to be bound by international agreements that provide for the protection of fundamental human rights, but fail to take the necessary steps to ensure it does not support or encourage activites that lead to human rights abuses, or take effective measures to ensure that the corporations under their control do not violate these human rights.
MPI's submission to EFIC, Ausrtralia's export credit agency, on Phase 2 of the Sepon Mine highlighted the incompatabilty of the government agencies support for the mine with Australia's international human rights obligations.
For more information, please contact:
Igor O'Neill
Workphone: +62 21 794 1672
Mobile: +62 81 286 12 286
Created: 17 Sep 2004 | Last updated: 17 Sep 2004
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