30 April 2013
The SHARES Project closely follows and collects news items that are linked to the topic of shared responsibility. This is our ‘SHARES News Items Overview: 16-30 April 2013′ consisting of a summary of recent news relating to shared responsibility. (more…)
30 April 2013
The Arctic Athabaskan Council filed a petition on black carbon emissions with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Ruth Massie, the Grand Chief of the Yukon Council of First Nations, and member of the council representing First Nations in Alaska, Yukon and N.W.T., would like the Commission to declare that Canada is violating the human rights of Athabaskan peoples because of the inadequate regulation of emissions on black carbon, or soot, in the Arctic.
Canada should make black carbon emissions a priority, since the Arctic is warming fast and scientists think that reducing black carbon emissions is the most important way to slow climate change in the Arctic, according to Massie.
Source: CBC News | First Nation group files petition on black carbon emissions
30 April 2013
There are signs that Lebanon might participate in the Syrian conflict, since there are growing signs of involvement of religious groups – Sunnis on the side of the rebels, Shiites on the side of the regime – in the Syrian situation.
25 April 2013
On 24 April 2013, the District Court of the Hague in the Netherlands ordered Frans van Anraat, a Dutch national and former businessman convicted of selling raw materials for mustard gas to Saddam Hussein, to pay compensation to 17 victims of chemical weapon attacks by the regime of Saddam Hussein in 1988.
The case was brought by survivors of attack on the Kurdish city of Halabja in Iraq in 1988, in which an estimated 5,600 civilians were killed.
The judgment raises interesting questions from a shared responsibility perspective, as Van Anraat was only one of many contributors to the eventual injuries (see blog post written by André Nollkaemper here).
Source: Judgment Rechtbank 's-Gravenhage | LJN: BZ8333 | C/09/355125 / HA ZA 09-4324 (in Dutch)
Source: The Washington Post | Dutch court awards compensation to Iraqi, Iranian mustard gas attack survivors
19 April 2013
In Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) unanimously dismissed claims brought by Nigerians against Royal Dutch Petroleum under the Alien Torts Statute (ATS).
The claimants, now residing in the United States (US), had alleged that the subsidiary company Shell Oil aided and abetted the Nigerian government in torturing and killing people who protested the company’s activities during the 1990s. The SCOTUS held that the presumption that the ATS has no extraterritorial reach was not rebutted in this case, as there was no sufficient nexus with the US.
Amongst the first reactions, it was noted that this decision will likely bar most of the corporate liability suits brought in the US for activities abroad.
Source: The Washington Post | Supreme Court limits civil lawsuits alleging atrocities committed abroad