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.
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 Global Use of Child Soldiers: An estimated 300,000 children under the age of eighteen are currently participating in armed conflicts in more than thirty countries on nearly every continent. While most child soldiers are in their teens, some are as young as seven years old.
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.
Continued Sex Discrimination in Mexico’s Maquiladora Sector
In this report Human Rights Watch documents the Mexican government's failure to enforce its own labor laws in the export processing (maquiladora) sector. In violation of Mexican labor law, maquiladora operators oblige women to undergo pregnancy testing as a condition of work. Women thought to be pregnant are not hired.
The collapse of the Asian economy has given rise to massive layoffs of workers and wage and benefit cuts, not only in those countries worst affected by the economic crisis, but region-wide.
A two-person Human Rights Watch delegation traveled to Guatemala in January 1997. The visit focused on reports of the discriminatory treatment of trade unionists at the assembly plants there of the U.S.-based corporation Phillips-Van Heusen (PVH), and allegations of obstacles posed by the company and the Guatemalan labor ministry to the union’s recognition for purposes of collective bargaining.
Mexico, the United States, and Canada broke new ground in January 1994 when they brought into force a labor rights side agreement to accompany the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Maquiladoras, or export-processing factories, along the U.S.-Mexico border account for over US billion in export earnings for Mexico and employ over 500,000 workers.
China is increasingly using trade and diplomatic reprisals to silence human rights criticism, and governments around the world, when thus forced to choose between principle and profit, are putting business first. The perceived conflict between human rights and trade was perhaps best symbolized by U.S.
Throughout Pakistan employers forcibly extract labor from adults and children, restrict their freedom of movement, and deny them the right to negotiate the terms of their employment. Employers coerce such workers into servitude through physical abuse, forced confinement, and debt-bondage.
Economic and political changes in Russia have left many Russians staggering under the burdens of rising unemployment, high rates of inflation, disappearing social services and the encroaching threats of corruption and organized crime.
