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Due Process and the World Bank’s Inspection Panel

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Energy & Ethics

Part of the book series: Energy, Climate and the Environment ((ECE))

Abstract

Due process — the idea that everyone deserves equal protection under the law, and should be guaranteed a basic list of human rights — is one of the oldest justice concerns, dating all the way back to antiquity and culminating in the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights, which virtually every country signed in December 1948. Yet many large, international energy companies have consistently failed to respect human rights for their workers as well as the communities that they operate in. Indeed, oil and gas suppliers have depended on private security firms to protect their operations and suppress dissent. In Indonesia, Myanmar, Nigeria, and Peru, some firms selling oil and gas have denied free speech, employed torture, supported slavery and forced labor, sanctioned extrajudicial killings, and ordered executions. Shell gave guns to Nigerian security forces, and Chevron provided aid, helicopters, and pilots to an armed group that then gunned down nonviolent protestors on an oil drilling platform. British Petroleum, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, and other companies offer daily “security briefings” for mercenaries and supply vehicles, arms, food, and medicine to soldiers and police throughout the world.1

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Notes

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Vermont Law School, USA

    Benjamin K. Sovacool (Associate Professor of Law and Senior Researcher, Professor of Social Sciences)

  2. Aarhus University, Denmark

    Benjamin K. Sovacool (Associate Professor of Law and Senior Researcher, Professor of Social Sciences)

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© 2013 Benjamin K. Sovacool

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Sovacool, B.K. (2013). Due Process and the World Bank’s Inspection Panel. In: Energy & Ethics. Energy, Climate and the Environment. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137298669_4

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