Corporate Human Rights Benchmark Suspends Vale after Brazil Dam Disaster
1 February 2019
Following the devastating dam disaster in Brazil, which has so far claimed 134 lives with 199 still missing, Vale, the Brazilian mining company responsible for the dam, has been suspended from the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB). This was the second such disaster linked to Vale in three years.
Ethical Corporation reported that "at the launch of the 2018 benchmark in November, Peter Webster of EIRIS Foundation addressed concerns about Vale head-on, saying that companies are scored not on the number of human rights allegations are made against them, but how they handle such complaints, including whether they have implemented management changes to make improvements."
Dan Neale, CHRB's Programme Director, said “The Corporate Human Rights Benchmark seeks to provide robust and credible information on companies’ actions to respect human rights across their business.” He added that “Given this latest disaster involving Vale, we have moved to ensure their inclusion in our benchmark is not now misleading.”
Read the full statement on the CHRB website.
Photo credit: By TV NBR, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=76122790
