Car Companies’ Complicity in Forced Labor in China
The 99-page report, “Asleep at the Wheel: Car Companies’ Complicity in Forced Labor in China,” finds that some carmakers have succumbed to Chinese government pressure to apply weaker human rights and responsible sourcing standards at their Chinese joint ventures than in their global operations, increasing the risk of exposure to forced labor in Xinjiang. Most have done too little to map their aluminum supply chains and identify links to forced labor.
The Human Rights Consequences of Illegal Logging and Corruption in Indonesia’s Forestry Sector
This 75-page report found that more than half of all Indonesian timber from 2003 through 2006 was logged illegally, with no taxes paid. Unreported subsidies to the forestry industry, including government use of artificially low timber market prices and currency exchange rates, and tax evasion by exporters using a scam known as "transfer pricing," exacerbated the losses.
This 107-page report details how the dictatorship under President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has used an oil boom to entrench and enrich itself further at the expense of the country's people.
Human Rights Abuses in the Marange Diamond Fields of Zimbabwe
This 62-page report documents how, following the discovery of diamonds in Marange in June 2006, the police and army have used brutal force to control access to the diamond fields and to take over unlicensed diamond mining and trading.
The Human Rights Impact of Local Government Corruption and Mismanagement in Rivers State, Nigeria
This 107-page report details the misuse of public funds by local officials in the geographic heart of Nigeria’s booming oil industry, and the harmful effects on primary education and basic health care. The report is based on scores of interviews in Rivers state with government and donor agency officials, civil servants, health care workers, teachers, civil society groups and local residents.
On September 27, 2004, the leader of a powerful armed group threatened to launch an “all-out war” in the Niger Delta - sending shock waves through the oil industry – unless the federal government ceded greater control of the region’s vast oil resources to the Ijaw people, the majority tribe in the Niger Delta.
This 29-page report documents how violence in Nigeria’s southern Delta State this year, especially during the state and federal elections in April and May, resulted in hundreds of deaths, the displacement of thousands of people, and the destruction of hundreds of homes. Among the dead were probably dozens killed by the government security forces.
Human Rights Abuse and Indonesia's Pulp and Paper Industry
Indonesian police and company security forces are responsible for persistent human rights abuses against indigenous communities involved in the massive pulp and paper industry in Sumatra, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. Abuses include land seizures without compensation and brutal attacks on local demonstrators.
When a civilian government was reinstated in Nigeria in 1999, many of those living in the Niger Delta region, the source of Nigeria's oil wealth, hoped that a "democratic dividend" would end decades of neglect they had suffered under successive military regimes.
On April 3, 2000, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Angolan government announced the beginning of a Staff Monitored Program (SMP). This program is an ambitious agreement to implement a wide range of economic and institutional reforms in Angola that could lead to further lending and cooperation with the IMF and World Bank, but it is unclear whether the government will be able to comply with its requirements.
On April 3, 2000, as part of a larger agreement between the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the government of Angola to reform the economy, the IMF and government reached an agreement to monitor oil revenues that would be supervised by the World Bank.
On November 4, 1999, an armed gang killed seven Nigerian policemen in the community of Odi, Bayelsa State, in the oil producing Niger Delta region in the far south east of the country. Five other police were killed in subsequent days.
The Niger Delta has for some years been the site of major confrontations between the people who live there and the Nigerian government's security forces, resulting in extrajudicial executions, arbitrary detentions, and draconian restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression, association, and assembly.
Human Rights, Justice, and Toxic Waste in Cambodia
In November 1998, nearly 3,000 tons of Taiwanese toxic waste were dumped in a field in the southern port of Sihanoukville. At the time, there was no law banning such dumping, but Minister of Environment Mok Mareth said publicly and repeatedly that toxic waste imports were prohibited in Cambodia and a national policy to that effect was in force. Local people panicked:thousands fled the city.
Corporate Responsibility and Human Rights Violations in Nigeria’s Oil Producing Communities
This report is an exploration of human rights violations related to oil exploration and productionin the Niger Delta, and of the role and responsibilities of the major multinational oil companies inrespect of those violations.
