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Corporate Social Responsibility
News
8.02.2005 ET
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Amnesty International Launches SHARE POWER
First Comprehensive Grassroots Campaign for Corporate Accountability
(CSRwire) New York -Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) today announced the
launch of SHARE POWER, the first comprehensive and national grassroots
campaign that harnesses the voting power of large shareholders to advance
corporate responsibility for human rights. This year long campaign will
focus initially on two companies--Chevron Corporation (CVX) and Dow
Chemical (DOW)--and will culminate in national days of action around the
companies' shareholder meetings in spring 2006.
With socially responsible investment firms and major institutional
investors, AIUSA will co-file a shareholder proposal with Chevron
addressing its past operations in the Ecuadorian Amazon where
contamination is still affecting the residents and indigenous communities
and with Dow related to its liability for the 1984 Bhopal gas leak that
has so far killed 15,000 people and devastated the lives of more than
100,000. AIUSA's SHARE POWER campaign will connect AIUSA's 350,000 members
to shareholders that hold considerable investments in multinational
corporations with questionable human rights records.
"No matter who you are, where you live or what you do, you can find your
shareholder connection to a large multinational corporation and use that
connection to pressure change from the inside," explained Mila Rosenthal,
AIUSA's Business and Human Rights Program Director. "Amnesty International
and other human rights activists can use their influence with their state
and city treasuries, or their university's endowment, or their investment
companies to increase support for human rights-related shareholder
proposals. This shareholder support will deliver a clear and powerful
message to the companies' management."
This summer, as part of the campaign, concerned residents in Olympia,
Washington will be pressuring the Washington State Investment Board to
vote in favor of the proposals submitted to Chevron and Dow asking them to
address their human rights impact in the Amazon and in Bhopal. Activists in
Western Massachusetts are already pushing Fidelity Investments on the same
issues. In the same way, students at Columbia and Stanford Universities
are pressuring their institutions to develop clear proxy voting guidelines
for their endowments that will ensure they vote their shares in favor of
human rights proposals. All of the information on these and other local
campaigns across the country will be posted in an online Forum for
activists. The Forum will be the first online resource documenting how
large shareholders use, or don't use, their power to support socially and
environmentally responsible initiatives (www.amnestyusa.org/business/sharepower).
SHARE POWER recognizes that governments have the primary responsibility of
protecting human rights, but also that companies must respect the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights in their own operations and spheres of
influence. SHARE POWER's two main cases illustrate the urgency of
corporate accountability for human rights:
In Bhopal, India, a gas leak in 1984 killed more than 7,000 people
during a three-day span and claimed an additional 15,000 lives in the
years that followed. Today more than 100,000 people, disproportionately
including the poorest in the city, continue to suffer the devastating
effects of the disaster, including chronic, debilitating, largely
untreatable illnesses. The leak was from a pesticide plant owned by Union
Carbide Corporation (UCC), which is owned today by Dow Chemical Company.
Dow denies that UCC has any criminal liability for the leak, despite
criminal charges still pending in Indian court. UCC and Dow have stated
that they have no further responsibility for the effects of the leak.
In the Ecuadorian Amazon, according to environmental studies, during
Texaco's two decades of operations, the company dumped more than 19
billion gallons of toxic wastewaters in the Amazonian ecosystem and was
responsible for 16.8 million gallons of crude oil spilling from the main
pipeline into the region. Contaminated water and crops continue to
devastate the health of indigenous people and other residents in the
nearby communities. Texaco is now owned by Chevron Corporation, which has
refused to acknowledge any link between the public health hazards and the
environmental problems caused by its drilling policies and has further
denied direct compensation to the affected communities for threatening
their health and their economic and cultural survival by polluting their
environment.
For more information: http://www.amnestyusa.org/business/sharepower
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