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 protests in Cairo, telecom [...]

After 3 months of massive negative coverage BP shows a balanced news sheet in Covalence EthicalQuote database today. Ottawa Citizen, Die Tagesspiegel and Agence France Press say BP is close to success in pumping cement into its ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, while Quote.com, Devvy Kidd Website and AFP highlight the risks [...]

At a sprawling landfill some 50 miles from the oil-spotted coastline, trash bags brimming with tar balls, oil-soaked boom, sand and tangles of sea grass are dumped. Though workers in the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history wear protective gloves and coveralls as they labor across the Gulf Coast clearing beaches of oil, the mounds [...]

It is rare for two global crises to occur in such quick succession.  The banking and financial services industry, once heralded for its social responsibility and support of community issues, is under fire for seriously mishandling their financial responsibilities of late.  On the oil industry front, BP, once the darling of progressives for their “Beyond [...]

The chief executives of the world’s biggest international oil companies will testify on Tuesday that the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico “was preventable’’, publicly distancing themselves for the first time from the UK company, the Financial Times has learnt. Executives from ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron and ConocoPhillips will say that by following current [...]

Environmental groups have attacked a national press campaign by Shell as ” ill-timed and “at best cynical and at worse downright dishonest”. Shell, the oil company, today (May 28) launched a series of full-page national ads in today’s Times, Guardian, Independent and Telegraph. The advert reads: “Let’s deliver energy for a changing world,” before covering [...]

NEW ORLEANS – A BP shareholder has filed suit against the corporation’s top executives because of the offshore rig disaster that has led to the growing oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. Filed in federal court in New Orleans on Friday, the lawsuit by Pennsylvania resident Katherine Firpo accuses Anthony B. Hayward, the chief [...]

Environmental groups have accused BP of dropping its pledge to be green and replacing it with a commitment to be “responsible”. The oil giant was widely recognised as the first oil company to both acknowledge and tackle climate change. Also, its in-house carbon trading scheme – built with a little help from an unlikely ally, [...]

The law firm Eversheds sent us this email: “It is reported today that BP is to drop its wind farm and other renewable schemes in Britain to concentrate its spending programme on the US. Michelle Thomas, head of the Clean Energy and Sustainability team at international law firm Eversheds, comments: “The news that BP has [...]

Ministers mounted a secret campaign to persuade huge British firms to adopt “an ethical approach” to their investments in Zimbabwe, amid concerns that some could be “silently complicit” in Robert Mugabe’s reign of terror, documents obtained by The Independent on Sunday have revealed.A clutch of internal Foreign Office (FCO) emails lay bare the Government’s deepening [...]