Written by Clare Oxborrow at Friends of the Earth Commodity supply chains are trashing forests and trampling human rights. Clare Oxborrow explains why the government’s new Environment Act will fail to protect communities and why it must take effective action to regulate UK companies. Read full blog below.
A new report from Amnesty International UK detailing JCB’s failure to conduct proper human rights due diligence on the end use of its products, representing a failure to respect human rights. For many years JCB’s heavy machinery has been used in situations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) where war crimes and human rights violations have been...
A new legal review by Tim Otty QC and Naina Patel of Blackstone Chambers looks into Boohoo’s Leicester supply chain and finds the fast fashion brand could have been held liable under a UK mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence law called for by rights groups. In the review, it is argued that, “Boohoo...
A coalition of civil society organisations is calling for the introduction a new ‘Business, Human Rights and Environment Act’: a UK ‘mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence’ law, based on the duties to prevent tax evasion and bribery found in the Criminal Finances Act 2017 and the Bribery Act 2010 – as called for...
Over 180 indigenous peoples’ organisations, civil society groups, including human rights, environmental and conservation organisations and human rights, land and environmental defenders, as well as academics and experts from 58 countries worldwide have issued an Open Letter to World Leaders, calling on them to ensure human rights are at the centre of all environmental policy....
Joint-NGO briefing from the UK Working Group on the UN Binding Treaty on Transnational Corporations. Between 25-29th October 2021, governments will meet in Geneva to discuss the latest draft of the UN Binding Treaty on Business and Human Rights. This is a proposed treaty that seeks to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities...
A new briefing from Client Earth, “Endorsing the end of the Amazon: Critical weaknesses in the UK Government’s proposed forest risk commodities framework and how to fix them”, has been released in advance of the House of Lords debate on Forest-risk commodities this Wednesday, 15th September 2021. Prepared with the input of Brazilian organisations and...
A coalition of NGOs, Indigenous Peoples’ groups, scientists and academics is urging the Prime Minister to act on tropical deforestation and human rights abuses. In Brazil, the Congress is currently considering new legislation that would legalise illegal land grabbing in the Amazon. Such destruction of the Amazon has dire implications for the Amazon’s Indigenous peoples...
A new report from Cafod, describes current human rights abuses faced by land and environmental human rights defenders across six countries in Latin America: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Peru. It highlights key issues facing land and environmental Human Rights Defenders and demonstrates that these issues are not isolated but form a pattern of...
