Human Rights

Fortescue Metals Group, an iron ore mining company based in Perth, Western Australia, withheld $1.9 million in royalty payments from the Wintawari Guruma aboriginal peoples after the indigenous community asked the company to provide details of extraction plans on their traditional lands that contain many sacred cultural sites. Read More

Cisco, a major manufacturer of computer networking hardware and software, has been sued by the California Department of Fair Housing and Employment (DFEH) for discriminating against a former South Asian employee whose family is classified as low caste in India and fostering a ‘malicious, fraudulent, and oppressive’ work culture. Read More

CorpWatch executive director Pratap Chatterjee interviews Anna Feigenbaum, associate professor in Digital media & communication at Bournemouth University in the Southwest of England, on the role of private sector companies that manufacture riot control weaponry, used against protestors around the world. Read More

Contractors to Boohoo, an ‘ultra fast fashion company,’ have been paying their largely immigrant workforce at sweatshops in Leicester, a city in central England, less than half the UK minimum wage of £8.17 per hour for employees over the age of 25. Read More

Last month thousands of Black Lives Matter activists gathered peacefully outside the White House in Washington D.C. to protest the killing of George Floyd. They were met with unexpected force as police dispersed them with tear gas and flash bangs so that President Donald Trump could conduct a photo-op. Read More

The Cotacachi indigenous community is suing ENAMI EP, Ecuador’s national mining company, and Cornerstone Capital Resources, of Ottawa, Canada, over Río Magdalena, a proposed copper-gold mining project in Los Cedros Protected Forest in the Llurimagua area of Ecuador. Read More

The Juukan Gorge, a 46,000 year-old sacred Aboriginal site in the Pilbara region of Western Australia was blown up by Rio Tinto, the world’s second largest mining company, in a quest for iron ore, despite the fact that company executives were aware of the site’s significance to local indigenous communities. Read More

The companies that designed, manufactured, and installed cladding - a material used to wrap a building under construction - that caught fire at Grenfell Tower in London in June 2017, killing 72 people, have asked a UK public inquiry to award them immunity from prosecution, before they provide evidence. Read More

The city of Denver, Colorado, recently voted 8-4 not to renew $10.6 million in contracts with CoreCivic and Geo Group, the two largest prison contractors in the U.S. The vote was a response to local concerns over human rights abuse at for-profit prisons and undocumented migrant detention centers. Read More

Emails released under the Freedom of Information Act show that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has tapped into car license plate surveillance data gathered by Vigilant Solutions, based in Livermore, California, and the Irvine Company, a real estate business based in Newport Beach, California, despite previous denials. Read More