Far From Gulf, a Spill Scourge 5 Decades Old

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/17/world/africa/17nigeria.html?adxnnl=1&src=mv&adxnnlx=1277332366-OZfWoFw02vucIJDRkZXyiA&pagewanted=print

June 16, 2010 By ADAM NOSSITER

BODO, Nigeria — Big oil spills are no longer news in this vast, tropical land. The Niger Delta, where the wealth underground is out of all proportion with the poverty on the surface, has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some estimates. The oil pours out nearly every week, and some swamps are long since lifeless.

Perhaps no place on earth has been as battered by oil, experts say, leaving residents here astonished at the nonstop attention paid to the gusher half a world away in the Gulf of Mexico. It was only a few weeks ago, they say, that a burst pipe belonging to Royal Dutch Shell in the mangroves was finally shut after flowing for two months: now nothing living moves in a black-and-brown world once teeming with shrimp and crab.

Not far away, there is still black crude on Gio Creek from an April spill, and just across the state line in Akwa Ibom the fishermen curse their oil-blackened nets, doubly useless in a barren sea buffeted by a spill from an offshore Exxon Mobil pipe in May that lasted for weeks.

The oil spews from rusted and aging pipes, unchecked by what analysts say is ineffectual or collusive regulation, and abetted by deficient maintenance and sabotage. In the face of this black tide is an infrequent protest — soldiers guarding an Exxon Mobil site beat women who were demonstrating last month, according to witnesses — but mostly resentful resignation.

Small children swim in the polluted estuary here, fishermen take their skiffs out ever farther — “There’s nothing we can catch here,” said Pius Doron, perched anxiously over his boat — and market women trudge through oily streams. “There is Shell oil on my body,” said Hannah Baage, emerging from Gio Creek with a machete to cut the cassava stalks balanced on her head.

That the Gulf of Mexico disaster has transfixed a country and president they so admire is a matter of wonder for people here, living among the palm-fringed estuaries in conditions as abject as any in Nigeria, according to the United Nations. Though their region contributes nearly 80 percent of the government’s revenue, they have hardly benefited from it; life expectancy is the lowest in Nigeria.

“President Obama is worried about that one,” Claytus Kanyie, a local official, said of the gulf spill, standing among dead mangroves in the soft oily muck outside Bodo. “Nobody is worried about this one. The aquatic life of our people is dying off. There used be shrimp. There are no longer any shrimp.”

In the distance, smoke rose from what Mr. Kanyie and environmental activists said was an illegal refining business run by local oil thieves and protected, they said, by Nigerian security forces. The swamp was deserted and quiet, without even bird song; before the spills, Mr. Kanyie said, women from Bodo earned a living gathering mollusks and shellfish among the mangroves.

With new estimates that as many as 2.5 million gallons of oil could be spilling into the Gulf of Mexico each day, the Niger Delta has suddenly become a cautionary tale for the United States.

As many as 546 million gallons of oil spilled into the Niger Delta over the last five decades, or nearly 11 million gallons a year, a team of experts for the Nigerian government and international and local environmental groups concluded in a 2006 report. By comparison, the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 dumped an estimated 10.8 million gallons of oil into the waters off Alaska.

So the people here cast a jaundiced, if sympathetic, eye at the spill in the gulf. “We’re sorry for them, but it’s what’s been happening to us for 50 years,” said Emman Mbong, an official in Eket.

The spills here are all the more devastating because this ecologically sensitive wetlands region, the source of 10 percent of American oil imports, has most of Africa’s mangroves and, like the Louisiana coast, has fed the interior for generations with its abundance of fish, shellfish, wildlife and crops.

Local environmentalists have been denouncing the spoliation for years, with little effect. “It’s a dead environment,” said Patrick Naagbanton of the Center for Environment, Human Rights and Development in Port Harcourt, the leading city of the oil region.

Though much here has been destroyed, much remains, with large expanses of vibrant green. Environmentalists say that with intensive restoration, the Niger Delta could again be what it once was.

Nigeria produced more than two million barrels of oil a day last year, and in over 50 years thousands of miles of pipes have been laid through the swamps. Shell, the major player, has operations on thousands of square miles of territory, according to Amnesty International. Aging columns of oil-well valves, known as Christmas trees, pop up improbably in clearings among the palm trees. Oil sometimes shoots out of them, even if the wells are defunct.

“The oil was just shooting up in the air, and it goes up in the sky,” said Amstel M. Gbarakpor, youth president in Kegbara Dere, recalling the spill in April at Gio Creek. “It took them three weeks to secure this well.”

How much of the spillage is due to oil thieves or to sabotage linked to the militant movement active in the Niger Delta, and how much stems from poorly maintained and aging pipes, is a matter of fierce dispute among communities, environmentalists and the oil companies.

Caroline Wittgen, a spokeswoman for Shell in Lagos, said, “We don’t discuss individual spills,” but argued that the “vast majority” were caused by sabotage or theft, with only 2 percent due to equipment failure or human error.

“We do not believe that we behave irresponsibly, but we do operate in a unique environment where security and lawlessness are major problems,” Ms. Wittgen said.

Oil companies also contend that they clean up much of what is lost. A spokesman for Exxon Mobil in Lagos, Nigel A. Cookey-Gam, said that the company’s recent offshore spill leaked only about 8,400 gallons and that “this was effectively cleaned up.”

But many experts and local officials say the companies attribute too much to sabotage, to lessen their culpability. Richard Steiner, a consultant on oil spills, concluded in a 2008 report that historically “the pipeline failure rate in Nigeria is many times that found elsewhere in the world,” and he noted that even Shell acknowledged “almost every year” a spill due to a corroded pipeline.

On the beach at Ibeno, the few fishermen were glum. Far out to sea oil had spilled for weeks from the Exxon Mobil pipe. “We can’t see where to fish; oil is in the sea,” Patrick Okoni said.

“We don’t have an international media to cover us, so nobody cares about it,” said Mr. Mbong, in nearby Eket. “Whatever cry we cry is not heard outside of here.”

Human rights (the World Bank way)

http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/art-566445

Most of the world’s governments have ratified at least one human rights treaty or convention. Kirk Herbertson, Kim Thompson and Robert Goodland of the World Resources Institute ask why the World Bank Group – which is owned by these same governments – is hesitant to discuss human rights openly.

The links between human rights and development are well understood. Studies have shown that many countries that demonstrate respect for human rights experience a higher rate of economic development. Yet, human rights standards are not only important for countries, but also for the development institutions that invest in them. In particular, these standards can help guide development institutions towards investments that focus on the needs of the poor and the vulnerable. Involving the poor in development decision-making can direct attention to the structural causes of poverty, including discrimination, exclusion, and lack of accountability. Human rights standards are also increasingly employed as a tool for managing risks and measuring the effectiveness of development.

Conversely, violations of human rights — such as the repression of dissent, loss of community access to food and water, dangerous labour conditions, or discrimination against poor communities — can prevent an investment from generating net development benefits.

The World Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) – the private sector lending arm of the World Bank Group – have wrestled with human rights issues on many occasions. In January 2009, for example, the World Bank suspended a loan to Albania for coastal zone management, after an internal investigation found that the project failed to comply with the Bank’s involuntary resettlement policy, demolishing houses and leaving several families homeless. In June 2009, the IFC cancelled its loans to the Bertin cattle ranching project in the Brazilian Amazon two weeks after Greenpeace published a report entitled Slaughtering the Amazon, which documented the company’s destruction of indigenous peoples’ land and the use of slavery. In late 2009, an internal audit criticised the IFC’s investments in palm oil projects in Indonesia that affected poor and indigenous communities’ access to land. World Bank Group president Robert Zoellick responded by suspending further World Bank Group palm oil investments worldwide until a sector strategy is in place. In all of these cases, the World Bank Group could have improved the development outcomes of the projects through a more systematic identification and management of human rights risks.

Are human rights missing?

The World Bank Group has in place a number of environmental and social policies to help ensure that its investments ‘do no harm’ to people and the environment. In the 1980s, in response to public criticism of its involvement in controversial projects — such as Polonoroeste’s BR-364 Amazon highway programme in Brazil that uprooted indigenous communities, and the Narmada Dam in India that displaced 90,000 people — the Bank began to develop safeguard policies that require clients to consider the environmental and social implications of projects. These policies now require clients to conduct an environmental assessment and consider a project’s potential impacts on the surrounding communities before the World Bank approves financing.

The IFC followed with the adoption of its own policies. In 2006, the IFC established a set of ‘performance standards’ to guide its corporate clients in environmental and social risk management. These standards link explicitly to international labour conventions, but do not otherwise reference international human rights law. Through these standards, the IFC’s influence stretches far beyond its own portfolio, with more than 118 financial institutions and numerous companies having adopted them.

In May 2010, the IFC submitted a first draft of its revised performance standards to the board of directors for consideration. In an introduction to the draft, the IFC claimed that “businesses, civil society, and other stakeholders understand that social and environmental considerations in business contexts are broadly equivalent to human rights considerations” (p. 24). As a result, IFC considers its environmental and social risk management approach to adequately manage human rights risks. Bank staff often claim the same about their safeguard policies.

This is in contrast to the approach of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD, which is also owned by many of the same governments as the World Bank Group). In its 2008 environmental and social policy, the EBRD committed not to “knowingly finance projects that would contravene obligations under international treaties and agreements related to environmental protection, human rights and sustainable development as identified through project appraisal.” The World Bank has a similar policy for environmental obligations, but none for human rights (operational policy 4.01, para. 3).

Is the World Bank Group’s environmental and social risk management approach the same as human rights risk management? Certainly there is some overlap. For example, both World Bank and IFC policies seek to ensure that their investments do not harm local communities by mitigating pollution, health, and safety risks. But there are also many unique features of human rights risk management, which are not covered systematically in World Bank Group policies. A few examples include:

• Due diligence to ensure that a project does not contravene a government’s obligations under international and national human rights law;
• Assessment of affected communities’ ability to seek remedies for any harm suffered through an independent conflict resolution mechanism;
• Disclosure to local communities that a project has been financed by the World Bank Group, and that they have access to the World Bank Group’s grievance mechanisms;
• Recognition of the right to self-determination of indigenous peoples, including through the UN principle of free, prior and informed consent for activities that affect them;
• Clear exclusion from investment of inherently risky activities, such as large-scale evictions.

Human rights violations (ad, consequence) , if they occur, can potentially undermine a World Bank Group project — by making the project financially unviable, creating reputational risk for the companies and organizations involved, or undermining the intended development outcomes of the project.

Understandably, when World Bank Group staff members are not aware of human rights standards, they are unlikely to raise these issues with clients. A 2009 internal World Bank Group survey, for example, found that “overall, staff view human rights positively and think that they often deal with human rights-related topics in their work, but have little knowledge about formal and institutional human rights frameworks and their role in the development process.”

Barriers to rights integration

Even as an economic development institution, there are benefits to identifying and managing human rights risks (ad, above "consequence"). Nevertheless, human rights integration remains weak across the World Bank Group.

Unresolved legal obligations are the principal barrier. Under international law, the World Bank Group itself has not directly assumed any human rights obligations. When member governments created the World Bank in July 1945, they limited its mandate to ‘economic’ activities in order to safeguard the sovereignty of countries. At the time, member governments did not foresee that human rights, recognised one month earlier in the 1945 founding charter of the United Nations, would affect the Bank’s economic development mandate. Three years later, in 1948, governments adopted the Universal Declaration on Human Rights but have never revisited the World Bank’s Articles of Agreement to reflect the evolution of international human rights norms.

For many years, the World Bank Group considered human rights to be ‘political’ activities outside its mandate, but this has changed slightly. Currently, the World Bank Group’s official position is that it “may play a facilitative role in helping its members realise their human rights obligations.” This position has not led to a broader acceptance of human rights risk management across the World Bank Group.

While the World Bank Group’s legal position on human rights has slowly shifted, the approach of the executive board (composed of finance ministry representatives) has remained the same. The board has the responsibility of approving all policy reforms and investment decisions. In the past, some countries have opposed an explicit World Bank Group human rights policy, concerned that it would open the door to rankings, assessments, and censure of their human rights records. Even governments that have supported human rights in other forums have been hesitant to discuss human rights at the World Bank Group. This may be due to a lack of communication between governments’ finance ministries and their environmentally and socially-focused ministries.

The creation of the Nordic Trust Fund illustrates the sensitivity of human rights issues at the World Bank Group. The fund, originally proposed in 2006 as the Human Rights and Justice Trust Fund, was renamed in order to obtain board approval. After three years of delay, the $20 million fund began operating in 2009 with the purpose of increasing staff’s knowledge of the links between human rights and development through workshops and pilot programmes. While the fund plays an important role in educating World Bank Group staff about human rights issues, it is not permitted to suggest improvements in World Bank Group policies.

Opportunity to update the policies

Despite these challenges, there may be reason for optimism in the next few years. The World Bank Group is undertaking the largest set of reforms in its history. The board of directors is readjusting the balance of power of member governments to give greater voice to China, Brazil, India, and other emerging economies. These reforms could create an opportunity for governments to advance human rights dialogue without risk of World Bank Group interference in their internal affairs.*

(ad, which means, advancing human rights could mean intervention to developing countries. this might be more so if the hosting countries are not signatory to human rights instruments)

One starting point for dialogue could be human rights risk management for the World Bank Group’s private sector investments. In June 2008, the UN Human Rights Council unanimously affirmed the UN Framework on Business and Human Rights, which was prepared by John Ruggie, the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative for Business and Human Rights. The framework identifies three pillars of a corporate human rights risk management system, including a state duty to protect, corporate responsibility to respect, and access to remedies. Many governments on the World Bank Group’s board of directors have already endorsed the framework.

During the next few years, board members will have specific opportunities to integrate human rights risk management into policy reforms. The IFC is currently updating its sustainability framework, including the performance standards. Human rights have become a prominent issue in these discussions, and IFC has publicly endorsed the UN Framework on Business and Human Rights. Similarly, the World Bank is expanding its Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, which helps finance countries’ efforts to reduce emissions by avoiding deforestation and forest degradation (called REDD initiatives). The REDD initiatives have clear human rights implications, as they could potentially affect communities’ access to forest lands. The Facility provides an opportunity to integrate indigenous peoples’ rights and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into the World Bank’s growing climate change portfolio. In 2010, the World Bank Group is also updating its energy strategy, which will guide its investments in the energy sector and serve as a model for countries that develop their own energy policies. This strategy review provides an opportunity for the World Bank Group to expand access to energy in a way that contributes to meeting the basic rights of the most vulnerable, avoids discrimination in energy provision, and ensures that clean energy development does not harm the rights of local communities.

Conclusion

The financial, food, water, and climate change crises have magnified the World Bank Group’s influence on development. At the same time, the shifting balance of nations is leading to changes in the World Bank Group’s governance, generating new priorities. These changes need not be inconsistent with a robust human rights framework. In fact, as this briefing suggests, a stronger approach to human rights risk management can strengthen development outcomes and enhance the World Bank Group’s ability to respond to global crises, in a way that promotes rights and empowers the poor. We encourage World Bank Group leadership to engage in more open dialogue on this important issue.

Kampala pix redux

From alumna Margaret deGuzman, a guest post contributing more photos -- captions at bottom -- from the just-ended the ICC Conference, another in IntLawGrrls' series on events in Kampala)







At left, Benjamin B. Ferencz, former U.S. prosecutor before the post-World War II International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and indefatigable advocate for international criminal justice, adance.

IntLawGrrl Beth Van Schaack (right), who served as academic advisor with the U.S. delegation in Kampala, and me.

Conference session; at far left of the podium is Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid al-Hussein of Jordan, Chair of the Working Group on the Crime of Aggression.

Preparation for whitewater rafting on the Nile River. Familiar faces include Case Western Law Professor Michael P. Scharf, 3d from left. To his right:Robert Petit, former International Co-Prosecutor at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia; me; Duke Visiting Assistant Law Professor Noah Weisbord; and Professor William A. Schabas, Director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights in Galway.

A path to fairness in the operation of the Security Council's "terrorist blacklist"

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/world/asia/13afghan.html?scp=1&sq=u.n.%20terror%20list&st=cse

June 12, 2010

United Nations Could Hasten Removal of Taliban Leaders From Terror Blacklist

By ROD NORDLAND

KABUL, Afghanistan — The United Nations is speeding up efforts that could lead to the removal of Taliban leaders from an international terrorist blacklist, the top United Nations official here said Saturday.

At a news conference, the official, Staffan de Mistura, the secretary general’s special representative to Afghanistan, said the United Nations was responding to the call of Afghanistan’s recent consultative peace gathering, called a jirga, to de-list Taliban figures.

A four-member delegation from the Security Council’s Al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee is in Kabul on a three-day visit to study the composition of the terrorist blacklist and make recommendations to the Security Council about possible changes, he said. “I am personally delighted that the timing of the visit coincided, quote unquote, with the follow-up to the peace jirga,” Mr. de Mistura said, adding that it was an important part of building momentum toward peace talks.

Since 1999, Security Council Resolution 1267 has blacklisted 142 Taliban figures as well as 360 others with ties to Al Qaeda, ordering their bank accounts seized and prohibiting them from crossing international borders. The presence of Taliban leaders on the list has been a sticking point in efforts to start peace negotiations with them, but attempts to remove any have foundered because of opposition from Security Council members.

In January, five Taliban insurgents were de-listed before the London Conference on Afghanistan, leaving 137 still blacklisted.

Since January, President Hamid Karzai has been arguing to remove all Taliban names from the blacklist. After the peace jirga made a similar call when it concluded June 4, the jirga chairman, Burhanuddin Rabbani, said bluntly, “Each party to the conflict will be taken on board in the process, and there will be no more blacklists.”

Mr. de Mistura said the blacklist committee was to make its recommendations to the Security Council by the end of June. He said there might be a slight delay “in view of the extremely complex situation and highly timely nature of their visit.”

Mr. de Mistura said the committee’s work was aimed at “updating” the list. “Updating means taking on or taking off,” he said, adding that ultimately the Security Council would decide. “The fact that this is taking place so soon after the peace jirga and so soon after the appeal to look at the contents of this list is a sign of proactivity which we welcome,” he said. “If we want the peace jirga to produce results, we need to keep momentum.”

American officials have argued for removal from the blacklist on a case-by-case basis; Russia and China have objected as well to a broad de-listing of the Taliban. Now, a United Nations official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities said there was a real possibility of removing at least a large portion of the Taliban names. Most of them are former Taliban government ministers and other political figures, rather than military commanders.

Although Security Council members could veto any proposal to de-list Taliban leaders, the United Nations official said their opposition was not as hard and fast as it had been. “The Americans would certainly oppose some of the big names,” he said.

Mr. Karzai has suggested that de-listing should include even the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar and the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Mr. de Mistura also expressed support for Afghan efforts to establish guidelines for speedily releasing insurgents from detention in cases in which they had not been charged with any crimes, another request made by the jirga. Many such prisoners are still in United States military custody here, although talks have been under way to transfer control of them to Afghanistan.

Mr. Karzai’s support for the rapid release of detained insurgents was one issue believed underlying his abrupt decision last week to dismiss his interior minister and the head of the Afghan intelligence service, both of whom opposed indiscriminate prisoner releases.

The United States ambassador, Karl W. Eikenberry, speaking to Afghan journalists on June 5, the day after the jirga ended, did not indicate any change of United States policy toward the blacklist.

“Consideration on a case-by-case basis by anybody that your government puts forward will certainly be given, as we demonstrated in advance of the London Conference,” Mr. Eikenberry said.

While Mr. de Mistura praised the jirga as “a step forward in the right direction,” many critics said that it comprised mainly Karzai supporters who were not representative of the country at large, and that it did not include insurgents. The Taliban also denounced the event, repeating their stance that no peace negotiations could begin until foreign troops had left Afghanistan.

In other developments in Afghanistan on Saturday, Taliban insurgents killed eight Afghan policemen in two attacks in Kandahar Province in the south and one in eastern Khost Province.

Also on Saturday, according to news releases from the International Security Assistance Force, one coalition soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan and a second was killed in an insurgent attack. No other details were released.

Poland Seeks End to Mission

WARSAW (Reuters) — Poland will press its NATO allies to draw up plans to end the mission in Afghanistan as soon as possible, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Saturday.

Poland has 2,600 soldiers in NATO’s Afghan mission. Public support for the deployment has eroded because of the deaths of Polish soldiers and a resurgence of the Taliban. A 17th Polish soldier was killed there on Saturday.

“Poland will push its NATO allies at a meeting in Lisbon to jointly come up with a relatively quick and precise plan for ending this intervention,” Mr. Tusk said.

Afghan employees of The New York Times contributed reporting from Khost and Kandahar, Afghanistan.

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A path to fairness in the operation of the Security Council's "terrorist blacklist"

Posted: 16 Jun 2010 09:40 AM PDT

In 2001 the name of one Yassin Abdullah Kadi, a Saudi Arabian businessman, was added to the United Nations' Consolidated List, also known as the “terrorist blacklist.” However, unlike the hundreds of other names on the list, Yassin Abdullah Kadi successfully challenged his inclusion in a European court (ECJ). The European Court of Justice (right) held in 2008 that the due process violations surrounding Kadi’s inclusion on the list were contrary to the constitutional guarantees of the European Community treaty and annulled the EU regulation which implemented the UN-imposed blacklist. (Prior IntLawGrrls post.) The Kadi ruling potentially placed the EU in breach of international law and sparked a firestorm of debates as to when a domestic or regional court should violate international law for human rights considerations.

The UN blacklist was established in 1999 by Security Council Resolution 1267. That resolution also imposed upon every UN member state the obligation of placing individual sanctions (in the form of asset freezes and travel bans) on the persons and groups added to the newly-created blacklist. Resolution 1267 did not provide safeguards for ensuring that an individual was properly included, nor did it allow those listed to challenge their inclusion.

In thus making individuals rather than states the target of UN resolutions, the Security Council (below right) found itself heavily criticized by commentators and courts alike for depriving individuals of their due process rights. Only since the ECJ's Kadi decision, however, has this criticism solidified into a concrete threat to the Council's ability to coordinate a unified anti-terrorism regime. If domestic and regional courts remain unwilling to enforce Security Council resolutions, the security framework may fall apart.

To the Council's great credit, it has not been deaf to the critique of the 1267 regime. To the contrary, subsequent resolutions improved listing procedures and granted individuals the right to personally request delisting. Last December, the Council even adoptedResolution 1904, which established a temporary Office of the Ombudsperson, a position filled this month by Canadian Judge Kimberly Prost (left), who's been an ad litem judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. (Prior IntLawGrrls post.) The Ombudsperson is responsible for ensuring that an individual could bring a delisting request, and remain appraised of its status.

Unfortunately, problems persist. For example:
► Individuals still cannot participate in presenting their own case, are not privy to the evidence against them, and have no assurance of impartial decision-making.
► Post-Resolution 1904, courts have continued to quash the regulations which implement the terrorist blacklist while citing due process concerns.

It is clear that the Security Council hasn’t gone far enough in acknowledging the world’s concerns.
Of course, guaranteeing respect for due process isn’t the only responsibility the Council must juggle when considering the 1267 regime; it must also ensure that it creates an effective antiterrorism regime and that it safeguards its own position as the primary guardian of international security. Thus, while many of the suggestions for the 1267 regime which have been tossed out over the past 11 years might solve the due process issue -- e.g., leaving initial listing decisions entirely in the hands of member states, or allowing state judicial review of UN listings -- these remedial mechanisms simply do not address the Council’s other fundamental concerns.

There is one suggestion which, while not perfect, does a fairly good job of balancing due process, security, and Security Council primacy concerns.
The Council should create an internal court which is open only to listed individuals -- not sanctioned states -- and which has the power to issue binding delisting orders. The judges on the court must be independent decision-makers with a specialty in handling sensitive intelligence.
If domestic and regional courts are able to look to the United Nations and see that the listed individuals have their due process concerns met there, such courts will no longer feel the need to take matters into their own hands by annulling the domestic implementing regulations.

==

(Delighted to welcome back alumna Kate Barth, who's just graduated magna cum laude from Penn Law, is studying for the bar, and is set to become an associate at the New York office of Allen & Overy this fall. Treating an international mechanism discussed in this news article, Kate's guest post today is based on her "When Due Process Concerns Become Dangerous: The Security Council’s 1267 Regime and the Need for Reform", which she and co-author Jared Genser just published in the Boston College International and Comparative Law Review)

Ballet at Sea? Who does BP think it is kidding?

Posted: 18 Jun 2010 08:10 AM PDT Much of BP’s s-called “charm offensive” (e.g. attempts to spin the Deepwater Horizon disaster as less than catastrophic) is already well known. The shameless attempts to minimize size of the spill, the ridiculouscommercials, the attempts to prevent reporters from informing the public about the horrendous effects the oil is having on wildlife (warning—very upsetting video) and beaches, the dead sperm whale found not far from the spill, not to mention the 11 oil workers who lost their lives, all show a company more focused on minimizing liability exposure than on minimizing the harms that flow (no pun intended) from its actions. But, even with all that evidence that BP’s crisis management cares more about damage control than on transparency, this “Report from the Gulf” on BP’s website made my jaw drop. I am all for finding the beauty in the everyday, but who do they think they’re kidding??? Oil skimming is dirty, polluted work that puts the health of the clean up workers, whom BP at first didn’t even provide with protective gear, at risk, even as it barely makes a dent in the toxic soup they are spewing into the Gulf. A few days ago, the Representatives Henry A. Waxman (D-Cal.) and Bart Stupak(D-Mich.), of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce sent BP a fourteen page letter detailing all of the multiple errors and poor choices that combined to create this disaster. Each one involved choosing to minimize costs by increasing risks. I have previously blogged about how the poor deregulatory choices the U.S. made over the last decade enabled BP to be so cavalier with the public good. (here, here and here). But, no amount of thinking about how this crisis occurred, or what lessons to learn from it could prepare me for the unmitigated gall of a company in full CYA mode. Hayward's testimony yesterday was more of the same. In case you missed it, here is a link to a Rachel Maddow segment where someone read the “report” aloud against a backdrop of what sea skimming actually looks like. p.s. This is a take that sums up the hypocrisy of BP’s “manage the public” approach to crisis response.