On February 12, 2019 an international group of civil society organizations, including the Global Justice Clinic, called on the United Nations Global Compact, the largest network for corporate social responsibility in the world, to delist the Brazilian mining company Vale from among its corporate participants.  The call comes two weeks after the collapse of the Feijão iron ore waste tailings dam in Brumadinho, Brazil. As of February 11, the dam burst had taken the lives of 165 people, left 160 missing and at least 138 homeless.  It is the second deadly collapse of a Vale dam in Brazil in three years.

In light of this latest disaster, the organizations claim that Vale has violated the Global Compact’s principles on human, labor and environmental rights, by failing to conduct adequate risk assessment, take the necessary measures for prevention and mitigation, or adopt measures of non-repetition after the 2015 collapse of the Fundão tailings dam in Mariana.

The organizations call on the UN Global Compact to delist Vale and to require the company to submit regular reports on measures adopted to remediate environmental damage of both the Feijão and Fundão dam bursts. They also call upon the Board of Directors of the UN Global Compact to require that Vale demonstrate its commitment to change its corporate culture, policies, and procedures, through concerted actions that would ensure respect for human, labor and environmental rights.

Signatories to the letter include Articulação Internacional dos Atingidos e Atingidas pela Vale, Asociacion Ambiente y Sociedad (AyS), Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC), Clínica de Direitos Humanos – UFMG, Comitê Nacional em Defesa dos Territórios Frente à Mineração, Conectas Direitos Humanos, Derechos, Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (DAR), Due Process of Law Foundation (DPLF), Fundación para el desarrollo de Políticas sustentables (FUNDEPS), Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (FARN), Global Justice Clinic – NYU School of Law, Greenpeace Brasil, International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Justiça Global, Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens (MAB), Observatorio Regional de Derechos Humanos, Transparencia e Inversiones, Project on Organizing, Development, Education, and Research (PODER), and SOMO – The Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations.

You can read the complete text of the allegation letter here.

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