normas para las empresas, derechos para los pueblos

The document advocates for a legally binding UN treaty to hold transnational corporations (TNCs) accountable for human rights and environmental abuses. It highlights the failure of voluntary corporate responsibility codes and the misuse of bilateral investment treaties to challenge public health and environmental laws. Through case studies in Latin America and Africa, it illustrates how TNCs operate with impunity due to legal gaps and state complicity, calling for a shift from voluntary guidelines to mandatory international regulations.

• Voluntary corporate responsibility mechanisms, such as the UN Global Compact (2000), the Equator Principles (2003), and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (2011), are presented as inadequate substitutes for binding regulation.
• Bilateral investment treaties and the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism are criticized for allowing corporations to sue governments over public interest regulations. For example, Philip Morris challenged Uruguay's tobacco control laws at the World Bank's ICSID, and OceanaGold (via Pacific Rim) sued El Salvador for $301 million after the government denied an environmental license due to water contamination.
• In Colombia, the Cerrejón open-pit coal mine—owned by Anglo American, Glencore Xtrata, and BHP Billiton—is accused of violating the right to water by using 17 million liters of water per day, while local residents in Alta Guajira consume an average of only 0.7 liters per day.
• The 2015 collapse of the Samarco tailings dam in Mariana, Brazil, involving Vale and BHP Billiton, is described as the largest environmental crime in Brazil's history, resulting in 19 deaths, 1,265 displacements, and the contamination of the Doce River across 500km.
• In Mozambique, the company Vale is accused of displacing over 1,300 families for coal mining in Moatize, providing substandard resettlement housing, and facing judicial barriers when victims attempted to sue in 2013.
• In Guatemala, the Spanish company Ecoener-Hidralia is linked to human rights violations since 2010 against indigenous communities in Santa Cruz Barillas, including the political imprisonment of nine community leaders.

APA

Friends of the Earth International (2016). normas para las empresas, derechos para los pueblos. https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/38-foei-spanish-spread.pdf

Chicago

Friends of the Earth International. normas para las empresas, derechos para los pueblos. 2016. https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/38-foei-spanish-spread.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Friends of the Earth International |title=normas para las empresas, derechos para los pueblos |date=September 2016 |url=https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/38-foei-spanish-spread.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{friendsoftheearthinternational2016normas, author = {{Friends of the Earth International}}, title = {{normas para las empresas, derechos para los pueblos}}, institution = {Friends of the Earth International}, year = {2016}, month = sep, url = {https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/38-foei-spanish-spread.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }