Companies Commit Human-Rights Abuses in America, Too

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http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/human-rights-abuses-happen-in-america-too/371702/

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A 15-year-old girl works on a tobacco farm in North Carolina. (Human Rights Watch)

***SNIP

Recent headlines indicate no shortage of business-related human-rights abuses in the U.S.:

Last week, The New York Times revealed that immigrant detainees are staffing the very detention centers where they are held—some run by private companies, others by the federal government—for 13 cents an hour. [Article 23, clause 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work.”]

Earlier this month, Human Rights Watch released a report documenting horrific working conditions for children farming tobacco in North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. [Article 23, clause 1 as above; also Article 25: “Everyone has the right to education.”]

That same week, fast food workers staged protests in 150 cities across the country in the hopes of securing higher wages. [Article 23, clause 3: “Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity.”]

Last week, Facebook announced that it would succumb to user anger about its opaque and fickle policies and give a “privacy check-up” to its users. [Article 12: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy.”]

Experts assert that human trafficking rises around the Super Bowl and other major sporting events, enabled by hotels, airlines, and other businesses in the travel industry. [Article 13: “Everyone has the right to freedom of movement.”]

In 2013, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received 93,727 private sector charges of discrimination during the last fiscal year. [Article 23, clause 2: “Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.”]

Human rights are clearly at risk in business operations in the U.S., but it is rare that companies or media frame such issues in human-rights terms. To be sure, human rights are at greater risk in countries where the rule of law is weak and there is less robust media and civil society to hold both governments and companies to account. But that does not mean that human rights are fully protected in Western countries—as I learned during my time with BP.