Corporate responsibility for human rights abuses worldwide is the focus of a conference hosted by Northwestern University School of Law.
The sixth annual trans-Atlantic dialogue, “Symposium on Corporate Human Rights Responsibility: Its Growing Relevance and Enforceability,” takes place from 2 to 5 p.m. on Wednesday and from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Thursday at the Bluhm Legal Clinic of the Northwestern University School of Law.
Chip Pitts, an international attorney who is president of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and a lecturer at Stanford Law School, will deliver the keynote address at 8 p.m. Wednesday to an invitation-only crowd.
Pitts was previously the chief legal officer of Nokia Inc. and chair of Amnesty International USA.
The symposium will identify some of the major legal and policy measures that should be adopted to effectively address human rights abuses for which multinational corporations, under appropriate legal standards, are beginning to assume responsibility. Specifically, participants will examine issues related to large multinational corporations’ commercial activities around the world, including the extraction of natural resources in countries such as Nigeria, Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The conference was organized by Northwestern School of Law’s David Scheffer and Stephen Sawyer. Scheffer is a professor and director of the Center for International Human Rights at the Bluhm Legal Clinic. He was previously the U.S. ambassador at large for war crimes issues and led the U.S. delegation in United Nations talks establishing the International Criminal Court. Sawyer is an assistant clinical professor at NU who teaches courses on international human rights.
All panel events are free and open to the public. For details, visit www.law.northwestern. edu/jihr/events/events(underscore) 10242007.html or call 312-503-8579.
