Here is our weekly roundup of stories we have found, focusing on human rights around the world.
AFRICA: Proving Ground For International Criminal Court?
CAPE TOWN, Aug 20 (IPS) – The International Criminal Court (ICC) is using Africa as a guinea pig, and is too selective when it comes to arresting, indicting and prosecuting perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity. This was one of the opinions raised during a recent seminar in Cape Town organised by the Centre for Conflict Resolution (CCR). Read more …
Predator State Calls the Shots
Economist Jamie K Galbraith’s recent book [1] describes modern (Bush-Cheney) Republicanism as creating a “predator state”. Its predatory aspects are starkly visible in the gangs of corporate lobbyists who roam Washington DC, the Halliburton Iraq war procurement scandal and the corruption and incompetence that surrounded the Hurricane Katrina relief effort. Read more …
Environmental, Social and Governance: Moving to Mainstream Investing?
The topic of incorporating environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria as part of long-term company valuation by financial institutions has been entering mainstream debate in recent years. Although many mainstream financial institutions, such as ABN AMRO and Goldman Sachs, have begun considering the effects of including ESG criteria as part of their fundamental financial analysis, investors are waiting for vetted proof of long-term materiality before fully incorporating the criteria. If ESG criteria become part of mainstream investment analysis, it can have an important influence on how public companies manage these issues. It is therefore important to understand how these criteria are being incorporated by mainstream financial institutions, as well as the barriers that have currently prevented such integration from becoming universally practiced. Read more …
Business & Social Responsibility
7,000 Paramilitary Victims Claim Reparation
August 20th, 2008 · Over 7,000 victims of paramilitary violence have responded to the call to claim reparation for their losses, the Presidential Agency for Social Action says. Read more …
Chiquita Brands Executives Called for Questioning
August 20th, 2008 · Colombian executives of Chiquita Brands, the U.S. banana company convicted for paying paramilitary warlords, will have to appear before a Colombian prosecutor. Read more …
EQUATORIAL GUINEA: Human Rights Drowning in Oil
LISBON, Aug 18 (IPS) – The oil interests of Angola, Brazil and Portugal could pave the way for former Spanish colony Equatorial Guinea to become the ninth member of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) two years from now, despite the country’s poor human rights record. Read more …
Zimbabwe Business Watch : Week 34
The situation in Zimbabwe has shifted from a crisis to an emergency as the economy is collapsing around businesses which are being forced to accept that if the rescue package does not come to our aid within the next few weeks, they too will be destroyed. Read more …
Zimbabwe Inflation Hits 11 Mln Pct as Talks Drag
HARARE (Reuters) – Zimbabwe’s inflation rate rocketed to over 11 million percent in June in a sign of the worsening economic disaster in the absence of a deal to end its political crisis. Read more …
EU Aid Chief Wants Mauritania Aid Frozen
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union aid chief wants the bloc to suspend its development aid to Mauritania and freeze the bloc’s single biggest fishing deal over the political unrest in the African country, a spokesman said on Monday. Read more …
RIGHTS-US: Arar Faces Uphill Legal Battle
NEW YORK, Aug 18 (IPS) – After suffering a series of stinging defeats of its detention policies in four years of Supreme Court decisions, the George W. Bush administration may be in for yet more bad news.
In what legal scholars describe as a highly unusual move, a federal appeals court in New York last week decided to rehear a case it had decided in June, when a three-judge panel dismissed a lawsuit filed by the man who has arguably become the poster child for the Bush administration’s rendition programme. Read more …
More Transparency Urged for Energy Companies
Britain’s big energy companies should be forced to open their books to show separately how much profit they make from their supply and generation arms, John Hutton, business secretary, has argued. Read more …
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