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For Immediate Release
June, 23 2010, 09:37am EDT
Contact:
Christina Rossi
617-306-0920
crossi@stopcorporateabuse.org
Report: Water Corporations Use United Nations to Bluewash Abuses
10th Anniversary of PR Initiative Celebrated in New York, Protested Globally
NEW YORK, NY
Corporate Accountability International released a report today,
"Water Governance: For the People or for the Bottom Line?" examining
how a joint United Nations-corporate initiative threatens the way water
resources are managed globally. Its release precedes the 10th
anniversary gathering for the United Nations Global Compact this week.
The Compact's CEO Water Mandate is a voluntary initiative addressing
the human right to water by partnering with corporations contributing
to and profiting from today's global water crisis.
"The United Nations is in a state of conflict. On the one hand, it
tries to promote democratic water governance as the key to solving the
global water crisis," said Kelle Louaillier, Corporate Accountability
International executive director. "On the other, it partners with
corporations that profit from water scarcity and commodification. It's
a recipe for millions going thirsty to satisfy the thirst for profit of
a handful of corporations."
tries to promote democratic water governance as the key to solving the
global water crisis," said Kelle Louaillier, Corporate Accountability
International executive director. "On the other, it partners with
corporations that profit from water scarcity and commodification. It's
a recipe for millions going thirsty to satisfy the thirst for profit of
a handful of corporations."
For the last three years, civil society has called on
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to withdraw United Nations support from
the Mandate. This week a "transparency framework" will be released in
an attempt to placate the Mandate's critics. But as Corporate
Accountability International's report points out, the problem with the
Mandate is rooted in its very structure.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to withdraw United Nations support from
the Mandate. This week a "transparency framework" will be released in
an attempt to placate the Mandate's critics. But as Corporate
Accountability International's report points out, the problem with the
Mandate is rooted in its very structure.
"The core problem is that the Mandate's presence within the United
Nations is itself a fundamental conflict of interest," said Louaillier.
"The United Nation's sponsorship trades accountability for
'partnership,' blurring the lines between the private and public
sector. This institutionalizes - rather than guards against -
relationships with corporations that pose real and potential conflicts
of interest, which is particularly dangerous when it comes to water."
Nations is itself a fundamental conflict of interest," said Louaillier.
"The United Nation's sponsorship trades accountability for
'partnership,' blurring the lines between the private and public
sector. This institutionalizes - rather than guards against -
relationships with corporations that pose real and potential conflicts
of interest, which is particularly dangerous when it comes to water."
"Water Governance: For the People or for the Bottom Line?" draws
attention to recently adopted, strong guidelines protecting against
such corporate conflicts of interest in the global tobacco treaty--one
of the most quickly and widely embraced treaties in United Nations'
history. Corporate Accountability International is calling on the
United Nations to establish clear and enforceable standards across U.N.
agencies that protect the public interest from corporate conflicts of
interest.
attention to recently adopted, strong guidelines protecting against
such corporate conflicts of interest in the global tobacco treaty--one
of the most quickly and widely embraced treaties in United Nations'
history. Corporate Accountability International is calling on the
United Nations to establish clear and enforceable standards across U.N.
agencies that protect the public interest from corporate conflicts of
interest.
"Issues like the global water crisis are too important to be
shaped by the corporate bottom line - the world's people, not the
world's largest corporations should be in the driver's seat," said
Louaillier.
shaped by the corporate bottom line - the world's people, not the
world's largest corporations should be in the driver's seat," said
Louaillier.
Key Recommendations
Governments must safeguard against conflicts of interest,
including avoiding situations when voluntary initiatives or
partnerships undermine governments' effectiveness, objectivity and
credibility.
including avoiding situations when voluntary initiatives or
partnerships undermine governments' effectiveness, objectivity and
credibility.
The United Nations should have stronger standards and safeguards
throughout the institution as a whole to prevent and address corporate
conflicts of interest. The U.N. should not be the institutional home
for initiatives that are conceived of and driven by corporations.
throughout the institution as a whole to prevent and address corporate
conflicts of interest. The U.N. should not be the institutional home
for initiatives that are conceived of and driven by corporations.
Swift and concrete action by the U.N. is needed to address the
concerns raised in this paper. Our recommendations for such action are
as follows:
concerns raised in this paper. Our recommendations for such action are
as follows:
* Have the United Nations establish clear and enforceable
standards preventing corporate conflict of interest, based on the
principles set forth in the FCTC's Article 5.3 that guard against
conflicts of interest and preserve and protect the primacy of human
rights over commercial enterprise.
standards preventing corporate conflict of interest, based on the
principles set forth in the FCTC's Article 5.3 that guard against
conflicts of interest and preserve and protect the primacy of human
rights over commercial enterprise.
* Have the United Nations withdraw its institutional support from the CEO Water Mandate.
Corporate Accountability stops transnational corporations from devastating democracy, trampling human rights, and destroying our planet.
(617) 695-2525LATEST NEWS
US Small Businesses Sue Trump Over 'Devastating' Tariffs
"No one person should have the power to impose taxes that have such vast global economic consequences," said a Liberty Justice Center lawyer, stressing that the Constitution empowers Congress to set tax rates.
Apr 14, 2025
Though U.S. President Donald Trump temporarily paused some of his "Liberation Day" tariffs for negotiations, a nonprofit firm and legal scholar still sued him and other officials on Monday on behalf of five import-reliant small businesses, asking the U.S. Court of International Trade to "declare the president's unprecedented power grab illegal."
Ilya Somin, a Cato Institute chair and George Mason University law professor, announced earlier this month on a legal blog hosted by the outlet Reason that he and the Liberty Justice Center—which has a record of representing libertarian positions in court battles—were "looking for appropriate plaintiffs to bring this type of case."
Monday's complaint was filed on behalf of FishUSA, Genova Pipe, MicroKits, Terry Precision Cycling, and VOS Selections. It argues that "the statute the president invokes—the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)—does not authorize the president to unilaterally issue across-the-board worldwide tariffs."
"And the president's justification does not meet the standards set forth in the IEEPA," the complaint continues. "His claimed emergency is a figment of his own imagination: trade deficits, which have persisted for decades without causing economic harm, are not an emergency. Nor do these trade deficits constitute an 'unusual and extraordinary threat.' The president's attempt to use IEEPA to impose sweeping tariffs also runs afoul of the major questions doctrine."
"It's devastating. The government shouldn't be able to make sweeping economic decisions like this without any checks or accountability."
Somin said in a Monday statement that "if starting the biggest trade war since the Great Depression based on a law that doesn't even mention tariffs is not an unconstitutional usurpation of legislative power, I don't know what is."
Jeffrey Schwab, senior counsel at the Liberty Justice Center, stressed that "no one person should have the power to impose taxes that have such vast global economic consequences... The Constitution gives the power to set tax rates—including tariffs—to Congress, not the president."
Just hours after Trump's taxes on imports took effect last week, he paused what he is misleadingly calling "reciprocal" tariffs—except for those on China, which now faces a minimum rate of 145%. However, his 10% baseline rate is in effect. As experts fret over a possible recession, the business leaders involved in the new legal challenge shared how they are already struggling because of the evolving policy.
"Instead of focusing on growing our business, creating more jobs in our region, and developing new products that our customers want, we are spending countless hours trying to navigate the tariff chaos that the president is causing for us and all our vendors," said FishUSA president and co-founder Dan Pastore. "It takes years working with factories to design and build our products, and we cannot just shift that business to the U.S. without starting the whole process over again."
Andrew Reese, president of Genova Pipe in Salt Lake City, Utah, explained that "we operate seven manufacturing facilities across the United States and are committed to producing high-quality products in America. With limited domestic sources, we rely on imports to meet our production needs. The newly imposed tariffs are increasing our raw material costs and hindering our ability to compete in the export market."
David Levi of MicroKits in Charlottesville, Virginia, similarly said that "we build as much as we can in the U.S. We're proud of that, but these surprise tariffs are crushing us. It's devastating. The government shouldn't be able to make sweeping economic decisions like this without any checks or accountability."
Critics of Trump's tariff policy have blasted not only how sweeping his levies have been but also the chaotic speed. Terry Precision Cycling president Nik Holm noted that "even before this year's increases, we were already paying tariffs of up to 39.5%. With the additional 145% now imposed, we can't survive long enough to shift course."
"Twenty years ago, we made all our apparel in the U.S. but gradually moved production overseas to sustain our business," the Vermonter detailed. "Bringing manufacturing back would require a long-term strategy supported by consistent government policies, investment in factories with skilled sewers, and access to raw materials that are not subject to high tariffs. Many of our products rely on raw materials that are simply not produced in the U.S."
Victor Owen Schwartz, whose New York-based VOS Selections specializes in imported alcohol, said that "as a heavily regulated business, we cannot turn on a dime... We are required to post our prices with the State Liquor Authority a full month in advance, so we're locked into pricing decisions that don't account for these sudden, unpredictable tariffs. This is devastating to our ability to operate and support the farmers and producers we work with around the world."
Trump is also facing a suit filed earlier this month in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida. That case involves Emily Ley, whose company Simplified makes home management products, including planners, and relies on imports from China.
As The New York Timesreported last week:
Her lawyers are from the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a libertarian-leaning nonprofit that counts among its financial backers Donors Trust, a group with ties to Leonard A. Leo, who is a co-chairman of the Federalist Society.
The Federalist Society is an influential legal group that advised Mr. Trump through the confirmation of justices he appointed to form the current conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, though some in Mr. Trump's circle came to believe that its leaders were out of step with the president's political movement.
Another donor to New Civil Liberties Alliance is Charles Koch, the billionaire industrialist and Republican megadonor.
Additionally, as The Hill pointed out Monday, "four members of the Blackfeet Nation previously sued over Trump's Canada tariffs, including the Canadian aspects of his April 2 announcement."
Along with arguments over the legality of the duties, Trump's tariff announcement and pause sparked concerns about potential stock market manipulation and insider trading, triggering calls for investigation, including from members of Congress.
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'Immoral, Inhumane, and Illegal': ICE Arrests Palestinian Columbia Protest Leader
"He came to this country hoping to be free to speak out about the atrocities he has witnessed, only to be punished for such speech," said Mohsen Mahdawi's lawyer.
Apr 14, 2025
A month after the international far-right pro-Israel group Betar named Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi as the next target in its campaign to push for the deportation of Palestinian rights defenders, Mahdawi was arrested Monday at an immigration office in Colchester, Vermont, where he had arrived to complete a test to be a naturalized U.S. citizen.
Mahdawi, who had held a green card for 10 years, was a leader of protests at Columbia last year where students called for the school to divest from companies that benefit from Israel's policies in the occupied Palestinian territories.
As The Interceptreported, immigration authorities scheduled Mahdawi's citizenship test around the time that Mahmoud Khalil, another leader of campus protests at Columbia, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in March.
The appointment, said media critic Sana Saeed, was "a trap to abduct him."
Vermont's three members of Congress—Democrats Sen. Peter Welch and Rep. Becca Balint and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders—called the arrest of the White River Junction resident "immoral, inhumane, and illegal."
"He was arrested and removed in handcuffs by plain-clothed, armed, individuals with their faces covered," said the lawmakers. "These individuals refused to provide any information as to where he was being taken or what would happen to him... Mr. Mahdawi, a legal resident of the United States, must be afforded due process under the law and immediately released from detention."
Khalil, Mahdawi, and several other Columbia students have been targeted for deportation under President Donald Trump's executive orders that purport to be aimed at ridding U.S. college campuses of what the administration deems "antisemitism," and Secretary of State Marco Rubio's "catch and revoke" program.
In an interview with "60 Minutes" on CBS in December 2023, Mahdawi spoke about how campus protests the previous month in support of Palestinian rights had been infiltrated by someone who was not affiliated with Columbia and who shouted antisemitic chants.
"I was shocked, and I walked directly to the person, and I told him, 'You don't represent us,' because this is not something that we agree with," he said. "To be antisemitic is unjust. And the fight for the freedom of Palestine and the fight against antisemitism go hand in hand, because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
After Betar began posting on social media about Mahdawi, he went into hiding and corresponded with Columbia asking officials to move him to a safe location. Mahdawi's lawyer told The Intercept that the school said it could not move him to housing where he would be protected from ICE.
Mahdawi suspected that an email last month from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), stating that his citizenship test was being moved up by several months, was a sign that immigration authorities were planning to "trap" him in order to detain him and try to deport him to the West Bank, where he is from.
He called the three members of Congress from Vermont, and spoke to Welch personally, asking them to intervene if he was targeted by ICE. The three lawmakers and their offices said at the time that they "would remain on standby pending news of Mahdawi's status after the [immigration] interview," according to The Intercept.
"We strongly condemn the Trump administration for abducting Mohsen Mahdawi, a lawful permanent resident, because he exercised his constitutional right to criticize the Israeli government's war crimes," said Edward Ahmed Mitchell, national deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "By abducting and imprisoning college students for engaging in free speech, the Trump administration is acting like an arm of the Israeli government, which regularly censors free speech and imprisons its critics. We demand the release of Mohsen and every other student who has been wrongly abducted."
"All Americans should be alarmed at the speed of attacks on basic constitutional freedoms of lawful residents in the U.S.," Mitchell added.
Lawyers for Mahdawi filed a habeus corpus petition on Monday, saying the government had violated his statutory and due process rights by punishing him for speech.
"Mohsen Mahdawi was unlawfully detained today for no reason other than his Palestinian identity," Mahdawi's attorney, Luna Droubi, told The Intercept. "He came to this country hoping to be free to speak out about the atrocities he has witnessed, only to be punished for such speech."
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Trump Wants to End Head Start While Boosting Military Spending to Record $1 Trillion
"Young learners and families around the country rely on Head Start and eliminating funding for this essential program would be devastating to local communities," warned one critic.
Apr 14, 2025
Critics on Monday decried the Trump administration's consideration of a budget proposal that would completely eliminate funding for the early childhood education program Head Start—which serves over 800,000 low-income U.S. families—while increasing military spending to an unprecedented $1 trillion.
USA Todayreported Friday that an unnamed Trump administration official—who is not authorized to publicly discuss the plan—said the White House's fiscal year 2026 spending proposal contains no funding for Head Start and explicitly lists the program among those slated for elimination.
Head Start is a core component of the so-called War on Poverty launched during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson 61 years ago. More than 40 million children have been served by the program, which provides free meals, healthcare, and developmental assessments and helps youth develop critical skills for success in the classroom and beyond.
The elimination of Head Start is included in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led plan for a far-right overhaul of the federal government whose objectives closely track Trump's policies, despite the president's efforts during his 2024 campaign to distance himself from the deeply unpopular proposal.
Here it is: Republicans told us in Project 2025 that they’d eliminate Head Start. Now, they’re doing it. Their concern for high costs, for kids, for parents — all lies. www.usatoday.com/story/news/e...
[image or embed]
— Katherine Clark ( @whipkclark.bsky.social) April 12, 2025 at 8:02 AM
Yasmina Vinci, executive director of the National Head Start Association, warned that defunding the program would be "catastrophic."
President Donald Trump's evisceration of federal agencies—spearheaded by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE—has already kneecapped Head Start via a Supreme Court-affirmed freeze on grants, the primary source of the program's funding. The Administration for Children and Families, which runs Head Start, is also reeling from the Trump administration's closure of half of its regional offices, including in Boston, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle.
Meanwhile, Trump supports a proposed $1 trillion budget for the Pentagon, up from $892 billion for the current fiscal year. The billionaire president and Republicans in Congress are also seeking $4.5 trillion in tax breaks that would disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Americans. This, as GOP lawmakers propose slashing $2 trillion in spending for Medicaid, federal nutrition assistance, and other safety net programs.
"While families feel the crunch with a worsening childcare crisis and much higher daily costs thanks to Trump's tariffs, President Trump wants to eliminate Head Start and kick hundreds of thousands of kids out of the classroom, fire teachers, and make childcare and early learning more expensive and less safe," Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said Monday.
Murray continued:
This administration believes we cannot afford to help families get preschool or help kids get basic health services, but we can afford trillions of dollars more in tax breaks for billionaires. It's offensive and just plain wrong, and let me be clear: Democrats won't let a proposal like this go anywhere in Congress.
But that doesn't mean Head Start and so many other programs aren't under grave threat—because Trump has proven he'll ignore our laws and do whatever he can to break these programs on his own. Trump has already tried illegally blocking funding for Head Start earlier this year, and programs across the country continued having problems accessing their funding long after his administration promised everything was fine. He has already fired the very people who keep Head Start running with no plan in place to ensure hundreds of thousands of families will keep getting the care they count on, so it's on every one of us to keep speaking out and opposing this administration's anti-family, pro-billionaire agenda.
Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, executive director of the Seattle-based advocacy group MomsRising, called the proposed elimination of Head Start "an abhorrent attack on children and families, ripping opportunities from our country's youngest, damaging businesses, and hurting our economy."
"Congress must hold the line and protect Head Start," she added.
The First Five Years Fund—which "works to protect, prioritize, and build support for early learning and childcare programs at the federal level"—said Monday on social media that "young learners and families around the country rely on Head Start and eliminating funding for this essential program would be devastating to local communities."
Hailey Gibbs, associate director of the Center for American Progress Early Childhood division, on Monday called Head Start "an incredible program" that "fosters kids' early development, supports family well-being, and boosts local economies."
"The Trump administration and its apologists in Congress want to gut it," Gibbs added. "We must safeguard Head Start and the thousands of families it serves."
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