CIEL analyzes the human rights responsibilities of International Financial Institutions at a public hearing held at the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights

February 28, 2007

At 10:15am (2:15pm GMT) of March 1st, CIEL, the Indian Law Resource Center, and Oxfam America spoke on Human rights violations and responsibility of international financial institutions. The organizations presented written legal analysis presented to the IACHR, in addition to Oxfam America’s The Inter-American Development Bank, the Camisea Gas Project and Human Rights.

For the first time, the IACHR will make the hearings available via webcast. The audio of the public hearings that will take place on March 1, as well as the hearings that will occur on March 2, 6 and 7 will be available for listening or downloading on the webpage of the Inter-American Comission on Human Rights for a limited time. In addition, as part of a pilot project, some of the hearings will be webcast live on the webpage of the Organization of American States.

CIEL has long advocated for more transparent mechanisms for hearings generally, including web-casting WTO hearings. CIEL and partners have written letters to the European Commision, the office of the U.S. Trade Representative, and Canada’s Minister of International Trade requesting their governments to make open hearings and web-casting their policy in all WTO disputes. CIEL also submitted a request to the Dispute Panel of the World Trade Organization, asking it to consider a web-cast public hearing in the Brazil- Retreaded Tyres case.For more information, please contact Marcos Orellana.