Weekly Update - 9 March 2016

Otros Mundos & Rights Action; Guardian; COPINH; teleSUR.net; Global Witness; statement by 50+ NGOs

• NGOs call for protection of Gustavo Castro, witness to the killing of Berta Cáceres, and other community members in danger
• we reached out to companies & funders involved in Agua Zarca project for statements on the killing & protection of other advocates; statements by Copreca, Finnfund, FMO & Voith provided

Business & Human Rights Resource Centre and CORE Coalition

• only 22 statements to date were both signed by a director & available from the company’s website homepage - both required by the Act
• CORE Coalition releases guidance on how companies can report effectively
• see also: Ergon Associates review of early statements also finds majority do not go beyond broad policy commitments & generic descriptions of risk assessment

Harpreet Kaur, South Asia Regional Researcher

Marco Simons, Zamira Djabarova & Tamara Morgenthau, EarthRights Intl.

• Australian companies employing more women make more money, study finds
• Côte d’Ivoire: Women cocoa farmers struggle with low pay, lack of land & training; refers to some advances by Mars, Mondelez & Nestlé
• Indonesia: Palm oil sector needs to empower women to address inequalities in land ownership, pay levels & health risks

Leigh Day; New York Times; Wall Street Journal

LSE Investment & Human Rights Project & LAB (Laboratory for Advanced Research on the Global Economy)

Fortune

Leigh Day; Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA); Miningmx; Bloomberg Business; BD Live

VOA News; African Independent; Centre for Research and Development; Herald

Mongabay.com

Leigh Day

Fundación Ideas para la Paz

Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, UN Independent Expert on the effects of foreign debt on human rights

• findings include lack of comprehensive framework to ensure respect for human rights in lending & outbound investment, need to improve consultations with affected communities, and a need for effective remedy

Japan Times

Human Rights Law Centre

Irrawaddy

Global Compliance News

Stockholm Environment Institute

Center for Economic and Social Rights, Global Justice Clinic NYU School of Law, Berne Declaration & Tax Justice Network

• includes responses from Hacking Team, Nokia & Siemens

Al Hayat

• Bangladesh, workers rights & the future of the garment industry (10 Mar, London)
• share & learn lunch: how human rights impact business (14 Mar, Lausanne)
• legal responses & remedies to trans-boundary pollution (15 Mar, Singapore)
• open forum on human rights & global value chains (16 Mar, Brussels)
• UN Guiding Principles & investment treaty reform (16 Mar, Geneva)
• speaker series: Arvind Ganesan, Human Rights Watch (21 Mar, Washington DC)

• KnowTheChain Project Lead (London or New York - deadline 21 Mar)
• IT & Digital Security Volunteer (London or remotely - rolling applications)
• Internships (rolling applications)

• Center for Economic and Social Rights (2 posts: Program Officer)
• Feedback (Supply Chain Researcher)
• FIDH (Director for Globalisation & Human Rights Desk)
• OECD (Legal Analyst, Natural Resources & Development)
• Profundo (Supply Chain Researcher)
• UNICEF (2 posts: Advocacy & Policy Specialist; Corporate Alliances Specialist, Children's Rights & Business)