The aliens are coming (to sue you)
The spectre of local litigation looms over companies for their actions abroad
IN A LOS ANGELES COURT ROOM: AN ONGOING trial against Unocal Corporation, a massive California-based oil company. Fourteen Burmese villagers allege that the multinational is accountable for human rights abuses perpetrated during the building of a gas pipeline. In the lawsuit, one woman alleges the military forced her family to leave their home and kicked her baby into the fire, where he died.
Represented by lawyer Terry Collingsworth and other professionals from the International Labor Rights Fund, the villagers believe Unocal should pay damages. Unocal disagrees, and is making a strong case for itself.
On January 23, Judge Victoria Chaney of the California State Court announced a preliminary ruling in favour of Unocal. The final outcome of Doe et al v. Unocal Corp. however, which was filed nearly a decade ago and has been winding its way through the US court system ever since, remains to be seen. In fact, verdicts are pending in a huge number of cases which take multinational corporations (MNCs) to task for their activities in developing countries. They are all part of a larger trend—the increasing efforts by NGOs and, to a lesser extent, international bodies and governments, to hold MNCs accountable for their activities in developing countries.
The ultimate goal of the current push to hold MNCs accountable is to eliminate corporate sponsorship of, or complicity in, human rights abuses, environmental degradation, and conflicts—essentially, to ensure that corporations ‘do no harm.’ With this in mind, the United Nations, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Organization of American States, and the International Labor Organization, as well as governments, non-governmental organizations and business associations, are attempting to create rules that provide companies with clear guidelines for responsible behaviour, and to enforce penalties upon companies that break the rules. The difficulty comes in ensuring that MNCs’ valuable economic contributions are not jeopardized; shutting down industry is not the goal.
