Human Rights

Clothing chain retailer Forever 21 has been sued by the U.S. government for ignoring a subpoena requesting information on how much the company's suppliers pays the workers who make its clothes. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the salaries are well under the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Read More

A decision by the Indian government to allow foreign multinationals to invest in the country's $500 billion retail market is expected to spell the death knell for thousands of small, family-owned shops and even threatens street hawkers, who have supplied local neighborhoods for generations. Read More

Six demonstrators were killed and dozens injured when the Guatemalan military fired into a group of indigenous Maya-K'iche' gathered on the Inter-American highway to protest rising electricity charges from Energuate, a major national power company owned by a private equity firm created by the UK government. Read More

Well over a year after AES Corporation, a U.S. based power company headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, inundated the lands of the Ngäbe to build a hydroelectric dam in Panama, many in the community remains dispossessed. Read More

BP, the British oil company, is attempting to blame "blue collar workers" for the Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010, alleges the U.S. government. Federal lawyers say the company is trying to divert attention from management failures of "gross negligence." Read More

Mongolian livestock herders are worried that a series of massive gold and copper mining projects spearheaded by UK-based Rio Tinto will dry up scarce water reserves and exacerbate desertification in the delicate Gobi Desert when operations begin next year to tap one of the world's largest copper and gold deposits. Read More

Transfield Services, an Australian logistics company that provides services to the mining and oil industry among others, has won a $25.9 million contract from the government of Australia to run a detention center for asylum seekers in the Pacific island nation of Nauru. Read More

Human rights monitoring groups and Cambodian activists are calling for an international boycott of Tate & Lyle and Domino Sugar, who do business with sugar suppliers accused of participating in government-sanctioned land grabs and illegal evictions throughout rural Cambodia. Read More

Grupo San Jose, a Spanish construction company, has been linked to the bulldozing the forest home of the Ayoreo, one of the last uncontacted tribes outside the Amazon. The indigenous community lives in the Chaco forests, a semi-arid zone in northern Paraguay. Read More

A third wildcat strike this year has closed yet another South African platinum mine less than a week after the police opened fire and killed 34 miners at the Lonmin mine north of Johannesburg. One reason for the clash is a war between rival unions. Read More