Go On! AI annual meeting in San Francisco

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest)

Amnesty International USA will host its Annual General Meeting this weekend, March 18-20, in San Francisco. Registration details here; full agenda here. (photo at right is from last year's meeting)
Amnesty is convening a special session for human rights lawyers on Friday, March 18 at the Fairmont Hotel, 950 Mason Street, from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. The event is free, but registration is recommened. Topics will include:

• the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act,


• the Torture Victims Protection Act,


• the Alien Tort Statute,


• corporate accountability for complicity in human rights violations, and


• applying actions from international human rights mechanisms in U.S. courts.

Here is the full schedule:

9:00 – 9:30 Welcome and Opening Remarks: Jessica Carvalho Morris (left), Vice-Chair AIUSA Board of Directors and Director of the International and Foreign Graduate Programs, University of Miami School of Law
9:30 – 11:00 Civil Actions to Hold Human Rights Violators Accountable: Successes, Obstacles, and Future Challenges

• William S. Dodge, Professor of Law at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law

• IntLawGrrl Chimène Keitner, Associate Professor of Law at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law (right)

• Andrea Evans, Litigation Director, Center for Justice and Accountability (left)

11:00 – 12:30 No Safe Haven: Criminal and Administrative Enforcement

• IntLawGrrl Pamela Merchant, Executive Director, Center for Justice and Accountability (left, at podium)

• IntLawGrrl Beth Van Schaack, Associate Professor of Law, Santa Clara University School of Law (below left)

• Theresa Harris, AIUSA Board of Directors and Executive Director of the World Organization for Human Rights USA (right)

12:30 – 2:00 Lunch

2:00 – 3:30 Corporate Accountability: Emerging Standards

• Paul Hoffman, Schonbrun, Seplow, Seplow, Harris, Hoffman & Harrison, LLP

• IntLawGrrl Natalie Bridgeman Fields, Founder and Executive Director of Accountability Counsel (right)

• Morton Winston, Founding Chair of the AIUSA Business & Human Rights Group

3:30 – 4:00 Discussion and Closing Remarks

Hope to see you there!

Using Accountability Mechanisms to Change Corporate Practice in Mexico

(We're delighted to welcome back Natalie Bridgeman Fields, Executive Director of Accountability Counsel, who contributes today's guest post...)

Many thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute a guest post.

On February 21st, construction of the Cerro de Oro Hydropower Project halted in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Accountability Counsel filed a complaint on behalf of three affected communities in November 2010 based on a wide variety of human rights and environmental problems associated with the Project. The communities received no information about the Project, were not consulted, impacts on indigenous groups were not considered, and there were insufficient plans to address and mitigate social and environmental impacts, including destruction of important waterways that communities depend on for household use, consumption and fishing. (The picture at right shows some of the project construction that is destroying the affected communities' creek, Arroyo Sal). The communities also have had problems with land acquisition and the lack of a required, local grievance mechanism to raise their concerns. The community complaints are here and here.

We submitted the complaint to the U.S. federal agency that financed the project, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (“OPIC”). (The picture below left depcits the indigenous Chinanteco community of Cerro de Oro voting to file a complaint). OPIC invested $60 million in U.S.-based Conduit Capital Partners, LLC, the key Project sponsor. The complaint is the fifth ever filed with the internal OPIC Office of Accountability, which U.S. Congress created in 2005 so that complaints like this one can be addressed in a fair and objective manner. The complaint seeks the Office’s assistance with resolving community concerns about the project through the problem-solving function, and seeks to hold OPIC accountable for its failures to uphold its own policies through the compliance function.

Before the Office of Accountability even initiated its problem-solving role, based on the information in our complaint to the OPIC Office of Accountability, members of the Oaxacan State Congress launched an investigation into the Project. Their Commission convened a meeting last Thursday, February 17th, where the company, communities, and governmental officials all presented their views. At the meeting, the communities demanded suspension of the Project by Monday, February 21st, and the Congressional Commission supported the community demand. The company, wisely realizing that continued construction was exacerbating the situation, called me on Friday to announce at least temporary suspension of work.

Now, with construction of the Project suspended, the communities and the company will be able to return to the OPIC Office of Accountability process to begin dialogue. We hope that this largely untested accountability mechanism will have a constructive role in the process. The complex dynamics at work here have created at least a temporary victory for the communities who were, until today, watching chemicals used in construction enter their drinking water and their livelihoods eroded. We hope the communities and company can reach a negotiated solution soon so that we can return to the portion of the complaint focused on OPIC itself – a U.S. federal agency that financed a project in vast non-compliance with OPIC’s own policies and procedures meant to protect people and the environment.

Accountability Counsel, a legal non-profit founded in San Francisco in 2009, aims to defend the environmental and human rights of communities around the world by creating, strengthening, and using accountability systems. In particular, we specialize in non-judicial grievance procedures related to international finance and development. We accomplish our mission by:

1. raising awareness and providing legal support to facilitate community complaints to accountability mechanisms, and
2. providing expert policy advice to advocate for new avenues of redress, and for reforms so that existing mechanisms are accessible, robust, and effective tools for justice.
   

Guest Blogger: Natalie Bridgeman Fields

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Natalie Bridgeman Fields (right) as today's guest blogger.
Natalie's the Executive Director of San Francisco-based Accountability Counsel, a legal nonprofit that she founded in 2009. The organization represents environmental and human rights of communities around the world by creating, strengthening, and using accountability systems. Its particular focus is on nonjudicial grievance procedures related to international finance and development. In her guest post below, she discusses one such mechanism, the U.S. National Contact Point for OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises.
Having been graduated from Cornell University in 1999, Natalie received her J.D. in 2002 from UCLA, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs. While a law student she interned at the Center for International Environmental Law, served as a consultant to a World Bank inspection panel, and was a law clerk to a North American Free Trade Agreement arbiter. Immediately after law school she was a litigation associate at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, working on commercial cases and on Cabello v. Fernández-Larios, a pro bono Alien Tort Statute case. Since starting her own law firm, she has helped to litigate another ATS case, as well as the post-9/11 lawsuit captioned José Padilla v. John Yoo (additional prior post), both pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
Along with Professor David B. Hunter, Natalie also co-teaches a course on International Institutions and Environmental Protection during the Environmental Law Summer Session at American University Washington College of Law.
Heartfelt welcome!

U.S. Contact Point & corporate accountability

(Many thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this guest post.)

Corporate accountability for environmental and human rights abuses abroad is often elusive.
As IntLawGrrls Rebecca Bratspies and Naomi Roht-Arriaza have posted (here and here), recent court rulings now limit the scope of the Alien Tort Claims Act in some jurisdictions, at least temporarily. Non-judicial, ‘soft law’ mechanisms thus have become even more important.
Among the latter accountability mechanisms is the U.S. National Contact Point, or NCP, an office of the Department of State created to take complaints regarding corporate compliance with the Guidelines for Multinational Enterprise issued in 2008 by OECD, the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development.
The United States is required to maintain the NCP to resolve disputes about the OECD Guidelines, which cover human rights, environmental, labor, and consumer issues, as well as other topics. Like other countries' NCPs, the U.S. office is tasked not only with assisting to resolve disputes about corporate compliance with the Guidelines, but also with issuing Final Statements about compliance at the end of the process. In the language of international financial institution accountability mechanisms, this gives NCPs both a problem-solving and compliance review function.
To date, the U.S. NCP has never assisted in the resolution of a single case. In contrast, as IntLawGrrl Christiana Ochoa has posted in other countries like the United Kingdom, NCPs have successfully participated in the resolution of major global issues. If transformed, the U.S. NCP could be a valuable tool for communities around the world. Among those communities are clients of my organization, Accountability Counsel, which represents persons harmed by U.S.-headquartered multinational enterprises.
Over the past year, Accountability Counsel has led a coalition of civil society groups to reform the U.S. NCP. Our direct talks spurred the office to published its rules of procedure. As we had anticipated, those rules:
► Fail to meet basic standards for transparency and independence;
► Lack details sufficient to result in a predictable process; and
► Are unlikely to lead to effective results.
The official State Department review is under way, with a new policy governing the U.S. NCP is expected sometime in 2011. In Washington, a public meeting will be held today, November 2, and comments on the U.S. NCP will be accepted at input@state.gov until this Friday, November 5.
Accountability Counsel already has submitted its comments to the State Department regarding suggestions for reform of the U.S. NCP. Based on our work with similar mechanisms at the World Bank Group, the regional development banks, and study of other NCPs, we demonstrated that key elements that are needed to bring this accountability mechanism to the ‘best practice’ level that civil society groups have worked decades to create. Our recommendations focus on:
► Increasing transparency;
► Setting timelines and rules of procedure;
► Providing for review of decisions; and
► Monitoring and enforcement in the event of a finding of non-compliance.

Accountability Counsel is also working on these issues as a member of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy, which will issue a report with recommendations for reform. Similarly, our group has worked with the United Nations' Special Representative on Business and Human Rights, Professor John Ruggie (prior IntLawGrrls posts), to create a page on the Business and Society Exploring Solutions site for the posting of comments and for debate about the U.S. NCP. The effort is aimed at improving transparency around this review.