Public revolt in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere makes it clear that many yearn for rights and liberties. But states are not the only institutions obligated to respect human rights. Companies also have human rights responsibilities and can be complicit in violating human rights. For example, during the first days of [...]

The legal battles between Pfizer Inc. and all the plaintiffs in the cases related to the 1996 Trovan clinical study were yesterday laid to rest with the release of a joint statement by the parties involved.Part of the statement which was released to the press, read, ” We are pleased to [...]

Chevron, America’s second biggest oil company, has been ordered to pay an $8.2bn (£5.1bn) fine it has described as “fraudulent”, after losing a 20-year lawsuit in Ecuador. Chevron is charged with causing environmental damage in the Amazon River basin more than 20 years ago through Texaco – a company Chevron acquired in [...]

Silicon Valley high tech firms are on the hot seat over accusations that they’re not hiring enough minorities. Three non-profit groups targeted Google for a protest because it wouldn’t provide a breakdown of its workforce by race or ethnicity. “The only way we can solve the problem is finding out what [...]

IBM, Intel and PepsiCo have topped rankings of companies with the most ethical reputations. The EthicalQuote rankings by Swiss company Covalence score 581 companies in 18 sectors, through the quantities of positive and negative news stories about each company. Covalence describes the system as “a barometer of how multinationals are perceived in the [...]

Over the Christmas and New Year, whilst people on the east and south of Australia were suffering floods and their consequences, one farmer, much further west, discovered a far more insidious flood was occurring on his property. He is also reeling from the consequences. Steve Marsh is the farmer of an organic [...]