Legal CASES

Holding Corporations Accountable Worldwide

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Main Work Areas

EarthRights develops precedent-setting litigation and advances novel legal strategies.

Corporate Accountability

We expose environmental destruction, climate harms, and human rights abuses; challenging conduct, repairing harm, and preventing future abuses.
Climate

EarthRights ensures that fossil fuel companies take responsibility for their role in the climate crisis by representing local governments, shifting financial burdens away from communities, and promoting stronger oversight.
Indigenous Rights

We partner with Indigenous communities and networks, especially across Latin America and Southeast Asia, to uphold territorial stewardship, defend their rights to self-determination, and demand meaningful state action.
Environmental Defenders

EarthRights provides training, legal defense, and helps create and strengthen regional and international networks for defenders.

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La Fiscalía Provincial se abstuvo de impugnar la sentencia de segunda instancia que confirmaba la inocencia de todas las y los comuneros de Urinsaya.

Alcalde de Pasco demanda a minera Volcan para exigir justicia ambiental por contaminación en Cerro de Pasco

New Mexico’s Regulator Sued for Failure to Hold Oil and Gas Companies Accountable for Well Cleanup

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For over 30 years, we have been the nonprofit legal organization at the forefront of holding powerful corporations accountable for human rights and environmental abuses worldwide and to shift power back to the communities they harm.

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Bowoto v. Chevron

Status: Closed

Issues: Corporate Accountability, EarthRights Defenders

SUMMARY In 1998, in response to environmental and economic damage caused by Chevron’s oil producing activities in their communities, members of the Ilaje ethnic group in Nigeria organized a protest at a Chevron offshore oil platform. The Ilaje took small boats out to the platform and staged a nonviolent occupation; they were unarmed and no…
Kiobel v. Cravath, Swaine & Moore, LLP

Status: Closed

Issues: Corporate Accountability, EarthRights Defenders

SUMMARY When the Ogoni people of Nigeria organized in protest of Shell’s oil operations in the Niger Delta, Shell worked with the Nigerian military to crack down on the Ogoni. Nigerian soldiers used deadly force and massive, brutal raids against the Ogoni people throughout the early 1990s to repress a growing movement against the oil…
Chadín 2 Hydroelectric Power Project

Status: Closed

Issues: Corporate Accountability

SUMMARY The Chadín 2 Hydroelectric Plant is one of more than 20 hydroelectric projects planned on the Marañón River in Peru. In 2011, the Peruvian government declared the project of national interest and in 2014, the Ministry of Energy and Mines granted it the concession of the project and approved its Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).…
Thilawa: The 33 Farmers

Status: Ongoing

Issues: EarthRights Defenders

SUMMARY Thirty-three farmers from near the Thilawa Special Economic Zone in Myanmar are facing criminal trespass charges for defending their land rights by continuing to farm their land in the face of illegal attempts to seize it from them. They have farmed their land in Thida Myaing Village, roughly 600 acres, often for generations and,…
Barrick

Status: Closed

Issues: Corporate Accountability

SUMMARY For decades, security guards at Barrick Gold Corporation’s gold mine in the remote highlands of Porgera, Papua New Guinea (PNG), have systematically committed acts of violence against the local population. Hundreds of women and girls living near the mine have been brutally raped by the mine’s security guards patrolling in or near the mine…