Blog

Today, communities in Nepal filed a complaint with the World Bank, demanding accountability for a Bank-funded high-voltage transmission line slated to affect over 100,000 poor and marginalized indigenous villagers.

Accountability Counsel supports tea plantation workers in Assam, India, who have filed a complaint to the World Bank Group’s accountability office, the CAO, regarding human rights abuses associated with the Bank’s investment in Tata/Tetley Tea.  Coercion and intimidation by the company continues, including harassment of workers who have voiced their complaints to the CAO.  Read more here.

On May 29, 2013, Accountability Counsel authored Comments on the Shift Project/ Mazars’ Discussion Paper regarding Developing Global Standards for the Reporting and Assurance of Company Alignment with the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.  Read our comments here.

The UK OECD National Contact Point has accepted a complaint regarding human rights abuses associated with the Phulbari Coal Mine in Bangladesh.

On May 29, 2013, Accountability Counsel submitted comments to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) as part of their review of their accountability mechanism.  Our comments focused on improving the process of assessing complaints, transparency, and independence, and were joined by the organizations Both ENDS, Forest Peoples Programme, Gender Action, Pacific Environment, SOMO and Urgewald.

Accountability Counsel is convening an International Advocates’ Working Group, a network of civil society organizations around the world to share information, lessons learned, best practice and strategy around international accountability mechanisms.  More information will be coming soon!

There has been another major Maple Energy oil spill in the Peruvian Amazon, Maple’s seventh spill since 2009.  Communities living along the Cachiyau creek are suffering from a spill of crude oil and produced waters.  We are calling on the IFC to take responsibility for yet another human and environmental disaster!  We have been working to support the communities of Nuevo Sucre and Canaan de Cachiyacu in their struggle to hold Maple and the IFC accountable since 2009.  Read more.

Accountability Counsel staff have just returned from our work in communities in Liberia and Mongolia, where we documented human rights and environmental abuses of a biomass company and trained nomadic herders challenging Rio Tinto.

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling limiting the ability of human rights victims to seek accountability for human rights abuses abroad.

By Natalie Bridgeman Fields Today, the U.S. Supreme Court harshly limited cases that may be brought in U.S. courts against corporations that commit human rights abuses abroad.  The Supreme Court’s Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum decision has significant implications for our work at Accountability Counsel, where we assist victims of human rights…

Today, Accountability Counsel and 30 other civil society organizations sent a letter to World Bank President Dr. Jim Yong Kim regarding the ongoing concerns and key recommendations related to the Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold mine in Mongolia’s South Gobi desert.

Today, the Chairperson of the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights, John Ruggie, release a Report of the Forum held at the UN in December 2012.  The proceedings cite Accountability Counsel’s intervention, noting that “it [is] unrealistic to assume that vulnerable communities could access international grievance mechanisms on their own, and noted that communities must be given every possible advantage to help them to be on equal footing with the company they are filing a complaint against.” Para. 53.

In late 2012, as a direct result of Accountability Counsel’s work, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) Office of Accountability agreed to a public and transparent review of the policies governing their office.  To follow this victory for accountability and our work to ensure that the review is fair, please see our OPIC OA policy page.

Today, OT Watch, Accountability Counsel and an international coalition of advocacy groups published a critique of Rio Tinto’s deeply flawed ESIA of its Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold mine in the South Gobi desert.

Just one week after its grim warning during the UN climate talks in Doha that the world is on a path towards a four degree-rise in global temperatures, the World Bank is set to approve financing for yet another coal plant. The plant will power a giant mining complex in…

We are pleased to present Accountability Counsel’s first Annual Report, covering our work from our founding in 2009 to the end of our most recent fiscal year in August 2012.

Tomorrow, the Inter-American Development Bank (“IDB”) Board of Directors will discuss an audit report finding that an IDB hydroelectric power project violates Bank policy and threatens the life of a major river in Western Panama and the communities that depend on the river for survival.

The President of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) responded to the Compliance Appraisal Report of the Office of Accountability in our Mexico Cerro de Oro case.  OPIC Management agree that changes to OPIC practice are important to ensure social and environmental compliance with OPIC policy and to verify that project level grievance mechanisms function properly.  More on this important victory is found on our Cerro de Oro case page.

Accountability Counsel and 5 other organizations filed a joint press release about planned international financing of the Oyu Tolgoi gold and copper mine in the South Gobi desert.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights obligations related to environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and waste issued a report in July focusing on the adverse human rights impacts of extractive industries.  The report cited our Peru case against Maple Energy as an example of violations to the rights to adequate health and life.  Read more about our Peru case here.