News Archives » Economic Justice
Please Support UN Resolution for an International Bankruptcy Process September 5th, 2014
We would like to share this prayer and action request from our colleagues at Jubilee USA. JPIC Director, Fr. Seamus Finn, OMI co-signed the recent Jubilee letter on this issue to Ambassador Power:
Friends,
On Tuesday, the United Nations General Assembly could vote on a resolution to not only stop vulture funds, but to actually prevent the world’s poorest economies from defaulting. A majority of countries support it – thanks to the work we have done together, the world is largely united against predatory behavior.
Yesterday, Jubilee’s executive board officers sent a letter to the United States UN Ambassador Samantha Power urging her to support this resolution.
Please pray for Ambassador Power as she weighs her vote, and we hope your entire faith community will pray for the UN process this weekend. We would be honored if you would share your prayers with us by replying to this email.
This resolution is an opportunity to win a financial reform Jubilee USA has championed since our inception: an international bankruptcy process for countries. As the Argentina case highlights so clearly, we need a bankruptcy system to stop predators and end the specter of default. Winning this resolution moves us closer to building an economy that serves, protects and promotes participation of the most vulnerable.
Thank you for your prayers and support.
FACT Launches Podcast Series August 11th, 2014
New Program to Examine Issues, Promote Work of Partners
Looking to more widely broadcast its message, the FACT (Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency) Coalition, of which the Oblate JPIC Office is a member, is launching a podcast series to focus on its core issues of corporate tax avoidance, transparency in corporate ownership, and combatting money laundering.
The FACT Podcast will be released initially on a monthly basis, and more frequently as policy developments and the news of the day as events warrant.
The first podcast, Who We Are, What We Do, and Why It Matters, is available on the FACT website, provides an introduction to the FACT Coalition and the work that it does on corporate tax avoidance, more transparency in corporate ownership, and combating money laundering. Upcoming podcasts will examine these issues individually and in more detail. Later podcasts will feature interviews with subject-matter experts and highlight the work that their organizations are doing.
“This is an exciting new addition to the FACT arsenal of information on these vital issues,” said Nicole Tichon, Executive Director of FACT. “The FACT podcast provides a new way to reach even more people and that’s a good thing.”
As mentioned above, the podcast is available on the FACT website. Users can also receive it via an RSS feed.
Human Rights Mentioned in Proposed UN Sustainable Development Goals July 23rd, 2014
Used under Creative Commons license; courtesy of Steve Cadman
Civil society welcomes human rights language in the open Working Group (OWG) outcome, while continuing to call for a rights-based approach towards development justice.
The Mining Working Group at the UN has reported through VIVAT that they congratulate the members and co-chairs of the Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on the completion of their work and their adoption by consensus of an outcome that includes seventeen proposed goals and an introductory chapeau. The group said: “In particular, we celebrate the mention of the human right to water in paragraph 7 of the chapeau, as an essential entry point for further work on ensuring a rights-based approach to development. With the Blue Planet Project and more than 300 civil society partners, we advocated long and hard for those two small words – “and water” – to be added to the text, and we applaud this achievement on the part of the governments that championed this language: Palau, Nauru, Papua New Guinea; Italy and Spain; Bolivia, Argentina, and Ecuador; and Uruguay.” Please see the OWG Press Release MWG
For more information on the Mining Working Group please visit miningwg.com
USCCB Infographic to Stop Slavery! July 2nd, 2014
Please watch this new info-graphic from the US Catholic Bishops’ Conference Anti-Trafficking Program, and take action today!
Vatican Issues Statement on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights June 25th, 2014
His Excellency Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva submitted a statement on the UN Guiding Principles at the 26th Session of the Human Rights Council on June 11th. The statement, titled “Report of the Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises” is excellent, calling for the need to broaden dissemination of the principles, attain scale in implementation, build trust among stakeholders and overcome barriers to effective remedy.
The Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (Guiding Principles) were endorsed by the United Nations Human Rights Council on 16 June 2011. The Guiding Principles provide an authoritative global standard for addressing adverse impacts on human rights linked to business activity around the world.
The Guiding Principles set out, in three pillars, principles concerning the State duty to protect human rights, the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, and access to remedy for victims of human rights abuse.
The following gives a flavor of the statement that reflects fully the Vatican’s concern for the impact of powerful economic structures and activity on the lives of ordinary people:
“The ability of international corporations to partially escape territoriality and carve for themselves an existence “in-between” national legislation is rightly one of the concerns of the International Community. Their mobility in terms of their country of incorporation, management, production, and financial flows allows them to navigate national legislations, take advantage of regulatory arbitrage and choose the jurisdictions that may offer the best return in terms of profits. Pope Francis, in his Apostolic Exhortation “The Joy of the Gospel”, and other religious leaders in the International Community have repeatedly pointed out that profit cannot be the only rationale of business activity. Transnational corporations are part of the human family and as such their activity should abide by the standard of human rights.”
“Another point of concern to the International Community is the inherent complexity of the transnational corporations regarding their diverse operating models (modus operandi) which makes them very hard to monitor and supervise. The resulting absence of robust and timely transparency makes it very difficult to measure compliance with rules and legislations. Human rights violations all too often occur out of utter neglect toward consequences that would have been foreseeable had anyone cared to think about them. These sorts of “neglects” are not casual, but systemic.”
