Amnesty International has launched its new Corporate Crimes Hub, a resource to assist in the investigation and prosecution of corporate actors by providing a range of tools to overcome some of the key challenges in building criminal cases.
The Hub forms part of the Corporate Crimes Project, which is managed by the Business, Security and Human Rights Team at Amnesty International, aims to prevent corporate human rights abuses by holding companies to account if they cause or contribute to such abuses.
The Project has worked closely with a network of NGOs from around the world, current and former members of the law enforcement community, corporate accountability academic experts and others involved in the investigation and prosecution of corporate crimes linked to human rights abuses.
Postgraduate students from the Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law, together with students from the University of Minnesota’s Human Rights Lab, and the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School, undertook legal research for this project. They researched case law and legislative provisions from around the world that could be used in holding corporations to account for human rights violations.
Speaking on being involved in the project, Adam Whitter-Jones, a student on the LLM in Human Rights programme, said:
"This was a really fascinating project to be involved in.Working together with other students and a respected NGO has provided us all with research experience and opened our eyes to the work that is undertaken, and the crimes that companies could, and often have, committed. The project has provided us all with a greater understanding of how corporations work across multiple jurisdictions, and how they can be found liable in one jurisdiction for their culpability of human rights violations in another."
Speaking on the work of the School of Law’s postgraduate students, Professor Yvonne McDermott Rees said:
"Adam, Felicity, and Otgontuya did an outstanding job in researching a complex and challenging area of law for this important project. The Corporate Crimes Hub is an incredible resource for those seeking to pursue accountability for corporate crimes, and we were thrilled to play a role in its development."