Backgrounders & Case Updates
IRAdvocates Files Drummond Appeal
Think Twice Before Shopping at Wal-Mart This Christmas Season
Talk About Human Rights!
IRAdvocates Working to Set-Up Indigenous
Human Rights Organization in South Sudan
Staff Spotlight
Featured Links
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IRAdvocates Files Drummond Appeal
On December 11, 2007, International Rights Advocates filed the Opening Brief for Plaintiffs in the Drummond case. The appeal seeks to overturn the rulings of Judge Karon O. Bowdre at the initial trial. Judge Bowdre dismissed most of Plaintiffs’ claims at summary judgment and then refused to allow key witnesses to testify at trial. In the appeal, Plaintiffs seek a new trial.
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Think Twice Before Shopping at
Wal-Mart This Christmas Season
With yet another Christmas season upon us, millions of people will be crowding stores across North America hoping to get good deals on merchandise that have been made with the hard labor of other individuals—unseen, faraway workers on the other side of the world. Unfortunately, many of these workers are not properly compensated much less well treated by their employers for the contributions that they make throughout the year in sustaining the global marketplace, let alone their role in keeping stores in stock for the holiday season.
In September 2005, IRAdvocates filed suit on behalf of workers from four continents that joined together in the most comprehensive legal campaign yet to press their common class claims against Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., for massive, systematic wage and hour violations. The workers are from China, Bangladesh, Swaziland, Indonesia, and Nicaragua. IRAdvocates has recently filed an appeal to a dismissal motion made by Judge Andrew Guilford and a briefing is scheduled for January, 2008.
In 1992, Wal-Mart developed a code of conduct for its suppliers known as the “Standards for Suppliers” and incorporated those Standards into its supply contracts with foreign suppliers. Suppliers have since been well aware that failure to comply with these Standards could result in the cancellation of orders and Wal-Mart’s termination of future business.
IRAdvocates is suing Wal-Mart on behalf of workers from four continents who have suffered from massive, systematic wage and hour violations in the most comprehensive legal campaign yet. Photo courtesy of flickrTM.
However, the workers allege that Wal-Mart knowingly uses suppliers that systematically deprive workers of the basic provisions of Wal-Mart’s code of conduct, including fundamental protections of the labor laws in the countries where the workers reside. Consequently, plaintiffs in this case have suffered from various poor working conditions, including excessive hours or days of work, withheld pay, confiscation of withheld pay, overtime without pay, less than minimum-wage pay, denial of overtime pay, less-than-required rest periods, lack of safety equipment, denial of maternity benefits, discrimination because of union activities, and in some cases, even physical abuse.
This holiday season think twice before shopping at Wal-Mart. Make better and ethical consumer choices by shopping at socially responsible stores instead. You can also help champion the rights of these brave workers by donating to IRAdvocates this Christmas!
Photo courtesy of flickr™.
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Online Shopping with a Cause
With the holiday shopping season upon us, let your friends and family know that they can help IRAdvocates simply by shopping online at iGive.com. With over 680 participating stores, however, remember that in the spirit of shopping with a cause, please be sure to purchase goods only from socially responsible stores.
Shop online through iGive.com and a percentage of the money you spend on your purchase will go to IRAdvocates to help fund litigation efforts against socially irresponsible corporations committing human rights abuses abroad. Help us fight for our human rights and improve corporate behavior today by registering at iGive.com and selecting International Rights Advocates as your cause!
Participating stores include Staples, Expedia.com, Nordstrom, QVC, Best Buy, and Office Depot.
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IRAdvocates Working to Set-Up
Indigenous Human Rights Organization in South Sudan
As a part of its mission to empower those who are in a position to support and defend human rights locally, IRAdvocates has launched a project through its Global Programs that will seek to establish an indigenous human rights organization in Southern Sudan, an afflicted region that has been suffering the consequences of environmental damages exacted by primarily Chinese and Malaysian oil companies boring gaping craters in pristine lands used for centuries by transhumant pastoralists. Groups living in the region have also been subjected to human rights abuses committed by these oil companies. The project is being called The South Sudan Public Interest Law and Oil Industry Accountability Project.
On a recent visit to Juba, the capital of South Sudan, in November, Todd Howland (Director of Global Programs at IRAdvocates) and a colleague, Raphael Abiem (TJ Advisor for the UN Mission in Liberia, who visited the region on his own personal capacity), met with resident members of the international community, national civil society organizations and the tiny community of lawyers in the Southern Sudan, whose total number does not presently exceed fifteen. The purpose of their visit was to see if the project was feasible and to find out whether the facts on the ground were actionable. There, they learned that Abyei, an impoverished part of the country is currently believed to be rich in oil. The region, like many areas on the borders with Northern Sudan, is teetering on the edge of ecological and human rights disasters to which the world has not yet awoken.
Their meetings with interlocutors revealed that oil companies are exacting damages of colossal proportions on the environment and the people of South Sudan, especially in the Sudd, (The Sudd is declared protected under the International Ramsar Convention. See http://www.ramsar.org/wwd/wwd_index.htm) the marshland area located in the Upper Nile region of the Southern Sudan. (For further information please visit http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2006/052006/wesselink.html.) Surface and subterranean waterbeds are believed to have been contaminated. Highways are constructed right in the heart of the Sudd, resulting in inundation of large swaths of habitable environs. The lifestyle the people of the region have maintained for generations is suddenly interrupted and no alternatives are provided. Cattle and people are known to collapse and die mysteriously. Those alive continue to drink the very sources of water earmarked by oil companies as their dumping pools. All this has made recovery from the 21 years of civil conflict all the more difficult. Most revealing is the fact that the Government started issuing licenses to oil companies earlier on with hardly any environmental impact assessment study done.
The Project’s objectives are to educate the public, advocate on policy issues related to access to justice, and most importantly litigate select cases that can help establish a culture of human rights and rule of law. In the first year of operation, 2008, select cases will be brought to address between three and five of the most serious kinds of human rights violations in the oil region, such as displacement without compensation and oil facility construction inhibiting return of refugees/IDPs to their traditional lands; contamination leading to serious health impacts (e.g., possible cancer causing agents in the water/land); changes undermining the right to livelihood (e.g., change in water table and change in natural flow of water undermining traditional migration patterns and farming); specific incidents of recklessness that have led to deaths; and labor related issues. If the Project is fully funded, the director, Mr. Abiem, will be able to contract additional lawyers based in South Sudan to handle additional cases.
Now that the project is underway, IRAdvocates is seeking to find an opening within the judicial system in Southern Sudan to bring cases to court. IRAdvocates is also currently in the process of seeing if there is any resonance within the donor community to fund the public interest law office to be established in Southern Sudan and headed by Mr. Abiem.
The Project’s first major lawsuits will be a case against Chinese and Malaysian oil companies to be brought in the courts in South Sudan for human rights abuses growing out of the their environmentally unsound operations. These abuses include the deaths of many children from company recklessness; a loss of livelihood due to the lack of respect for indigenous communal property rights; deaths and serious health impacts from toxic contamination; and disruption of migration and traditional water use. These cases will highlight the fact that conflicts in Sudan, at least in part, have been driven by water scarcity and that oil companies are using large amounts of water without regard to its social impact. The cases also highlight that the south of Sudan suffers the externalities of the oil drilling, while the north of Sudan use the revenues to help fuel the war in Darfur and possibly in preparation for another potential war with the South.
We have already entered into a collaborative effort with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in preparing the lawsuit in terms of developing the scientific evidence needed to support this litigation.
If you are interested in funding this project, please contact Mr. Howland at todd@iradvocates.org or Mr. Abiem at rabiem@post.harvard.edu.
Photo credit: Raphael Abiem.
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Staff Spotlight: Terry Collingsworth, IRAdvocates Executive Director
So that we do not forget to recognize the hard-working individuals who devote much time and effort to advance the work of IRAdvocates, we have decided to feature our Executive Director, Terry Collingsworth, for our staff spotlight this month.
Mr. Collingsworth is a labor and human rights attorney specializing in trade and international labor rights issues. He has been General Counsel of the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) since 1989. He was made Executive Director of the ILRF on September 1, 2001. In April 2007, the litigation practice of ILRF became the International Rights Advocates (IRA). Mr. Collingsworth’s primary activities at IRA are directing the IRA’s litigation, developing legislative proposals to regulate labor rights in the global economy, building coalitions with other groups to address human rights and labor rights issues in international forums, and researching conditions for workers in developing countries. On behalf of Burmese victims of forced labor, he initiated a landmark case under the Alien Tort Claims Act, John Roe III et al v. Unocal Corporation et al, seeking to hold Unocal liable for human rights violations that occurred during the construction of its gas pipeline in Burma . He has filed similar cases against Coca-Cola, for allowing the murder and torture of trade union leaders at its bottling plants in Colombia , Exxon Mobil, for human rights violations of its military security forces in Aceh , Indonesia , and Del Monte, for using paramilitary thugs to torture leaders of the banana workers union in Guatemala . Mr. Collingsworth also was instrumental in establishing the RUGMARK program, a unique system of certifying that hand-knotted carpets are not made with child labor that also sponsors education programs for former child workers. He is a graduate of Duke University School of Law, and has published numerous articles on labor rights issues.
1. Given the obvious difficulties and challenges of litigating against powerful multinational corporations, what inspired you to head an organization that does just that?
Well there was a great need for an organization to be willing to accept the challenge of fighting for human rights against the corporations—with all of their resources—and if we weren’t doing this then I’m afraid that no one would, and there would be a void in the balance out there. So the fact that it is a challenge is really an illustration of the need to do it.
2. Did you have any qualms about doing this kind of work?
No. By the time I was doing this kind of work I actually had quite a bit of experience as a lawyer. […] It’s really a question of your dedication and your knowledge, technical ability, and I felt pretty confident that with a couple of good people we could take on anybody—and we’ve done that.
3. Do you think that the organization has managed to make much headway in the human rights arena in its first five months of operations?
In the first five months, it’s hard to say. In my mind, I don’t distinguish between these first five months and the prior work that was started in the predecessor organization, the International Labor Rights Fund. I think, collectively, that work has made a huge difference on a number of levels. Certainly, all companies that are operating internationally know they could be sued for human rights violations. I think we’re serving a tremendous preventive effect because of that. And I also think that the particular companies we have sued, no matter what their view is of the merits of that particular case, I guarantee that they have reassessed their oversight and implementation of human rights policy in their global practice.
Terry Collingsworth and Janzel Abuel at the office.
4. What are two successes that you think IRAdvocates has achieved thus far?
We filed the Chiquita case. We were the first group to manage to go down to Colombia and go to some of the most dangerous places in Colombia and bring back the stories of 176 people who challenged Chiquita. The implications of that are huge because as Chiquita pled guilty to paying a paramilitary terrorist group it really just flipped the question of whether companies do that. Up until Chiquita, most multinational corporations accused us of exaggerating or being hysterical about this and we’ve always said that every company down there that is protecting real estate is working with the paramilitaries. And I think that the Chiquita case is the first of many that are going to prove that we were right on that.
The second big accomplishment of IRAdvocates is that we have successfully managed to take these large numbers of cases and find partners to work on the cases to be able to have a larger impact. And I think our methodology for going forward litigating these cases against huge companies will prove to be successful.
5. What are some of the big challenges this organization faces?
The biggest challenge for any organization like this is resources, including people and financial resources. It’s apparent every single day when you have a large corporation with a large law firm on the other side. They have unlimited resources, and we are always struggling to just keep up with the amount of work and the need for resources.
I think I have a good concept we’re going to implement which will be finding more law firms that are plaintiff-oriented law firms to partner with us to be able to leverage their resources and be able to successfully move forward with these very complicated cases.
6. The case against Drummond Coal was the first one against a multinational corporation ever to go to trial. How did you feel about that despite the controversial jury verdict issued in August?
I was very happy, regardless of the jury verdict, that we managed the tremendous logistical challenges of getting witnesses up to the United States from Colombia, of taking depositions in Colombia and Panama. We have in our circle established the process for doing these cases.
As we speak, I’m completing the Drummond appeal brief, and I am 100% certain that we have identified significant legal errors committed by the trial judge, and that we should be able to get a new trial. We will have learned from our prior trial and we will be victorious at the end of the day.
7. IRAdvocates is currently working with the International Labor Rights Fund in the case against Bridgestone-Firestone. With this being one of the organization’s biggest cases, how do you see it going in the upcoming year?
Next year is going to be the crucial year in the Firestone case. We have set up a schedule with the court to take the depositions of all of the representative members of the class of children working on that plantation. That will be a logistical challenge to get these people together, to work with them so they aren’t intimidated by the huge law firm representing Firestone, and that they’re able to tell their stories. All of that should be completed by June of next year at which point we believe the court will certify a class of all children who have worked on that plantation. During the rest of the year we should be getting close to our trial preparation.
8. How do you see next year going?
We are going to be extremely busy, because the good news is a number of our cases have gone past the initial preliminary stages—the legal issues have been clarified—and we are now preparing for trial. We will have a huge trial starting on June 21 in the Exxon case.
Happy Holidays from all of us at IRAdvocates!
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International Rights Advocates
Terry Collingsworth
Executive Director/General Counsel
Todd Howland
Director of Global Programs
Natacha Thys
Associate General Counsel
Rebecca Pendleton
Legal Assistant
Todd Howland
India Ochs
Editor
Janzel Abuel
Contributing Writer
Tilky Fernandez
Graphic Designer
FELLOWS:
Amy Beer, PhD, JD
Chris Saeger, PhD Candidate
Ida Zirignon, PhD, LLM
INTERNS:
Janzel Abuel
Aram Boghosian
Kristina Brazevic
Jed Forman
Genevie Gold
Sarah Houlighan
Aisha Husain
Guadalupe Lizondo
Osman Mosa
Marquel Ramirez
Blayne Tesfaye
VOLUNTEERS:
Laura Auerbach
Kaethe Carl
Ted Coyle
Emily Goldman
Phyllis Livaha
Steve Sacco
Lindsey Spitler
Toby Taylor
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International Rights Advocates
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T. 202-470-2516 | F. 206-338-2674
E. info@iradvocates.org
www.iradvocates.org