JCAP in the Media
JCAP has been active in providing media posts with alternative information regarding pertinent corporate accountability issues. JCAP authors have published various articles in media outlets such as Al Jazeera, BBC News, Huffington Post, The Globe and Mail, The Hill Times, and The Conversation. JCAP has also been involved in submitting materials to the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Confluências | April 17, 2025 | Thaís Henriques Dias
Shin Imai shares his journey as a lawyer and professor of Aboriginal law and human rights, as well as his perspective on some of his research and advocacy topics, including conflicts involving Canadian-registered mining companies in Latin America, the role of the Canadian government and its embassies in these conflicts, strategies for pursuing corporate accountability, and community lawyering.
Mongabay | May 15, 2024 | Aimee Gabay
Violent crackdowns by Ecuadorian security forces on antimining protesters there have highlighted the outsize role that Canadian mining companies play in human rights abuses in other countries, and the failure by the government in Ottawa to police their conduct.
Canadian Lawyer | November 28, 2023 | Carolyn Gruske
On February 20, 2023, Dr. Charis Kamphuis submitted a brief to the House of Commons’ Standing Committee on International Trade on behalf of the Justice & Corporate Accountability Project. The brief described a study of environmental and human rights considerations regarding Canadian mining firms abroad.
The Guardian | October 12, 2023 | Nina Lakhani, Damien Gayle and Matthew Taylor
Guardian investigation finds growing number of countries passing anti-protest laws as part of playbook of tactics to intimidate people peacefully raising the alarm.
Mining Technology | August 22, 2023 |
Mariano Abarca was brazenly murdered in daylight in 2009, after speaking out against a local mining project. Fourteen years later, his family are taking their fight for justice to an international human rights court. Kit Million Ross investigates.
Canada’s National Observer | June 12, 2023 |
Canada is fighting to have a renewed global say when it comes to human rights, getting an early start on its bid to sit on the United Nations Human Rights Council for the 2028-30 term. Topping Canada’s priorities list is “seeking justice and accountability for those on the front lines of defending human rights.” Not a bad priority, given the astonishing level of violence human rights defenders face globally. But for the families of front-line human rights defenders killed while speaking out against Canadian mining companies, it rings hollow.
The Guardian | August 18, 2023 | Nina Lakhani
It has been 15 years since the anti-mining activist Patrocinia Mejía was forced to hide in the forest to avoid being detained by police, but the shame has never gone away. Mejía was among scores of Indigenous environmental and land defenders criminalised for opposing a sprawling Canadian gold and silver mine in San Miguel Ixtahuacán, a rural Indigenous municipality in the western highlands of Guatemala, which divided the community and crippled the social movement.
CPAC | June 5, 2023 | MiningWatch and JCAP
On Parliament Hill in Ottawa, MiningWatch Canada hosts a news conference regarding the murder of Mexican environmentalist Mariano Abarca, who helped to organize protests against a Canadian mining operation in the Chicomuselo area of Chiapas state. Mariano’s family and supporters are announcing legal action against the Canadian embassy in Mexico, which advocated for Calgary-based firm Blackfire Exploration’s mining activities.
The Canadian Press | June 7, 2023
OTTAWA – Family and supporters of a Mexican activist who was killed after opposing a Canadian company’s mining project are taking their case to an international human rights body. The Justice and Corporate Accountability Project, a Canadian initiative by volunteer lawyers, is making a complaint to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of the family of Mariano Abarca.
MiningWatch Canada | June 7, 2023
In 2009, prominent Mexican environment defender Mariano Abarca was killed while speaking out against a Canadian mine and his family is still fighting for justice. Tonight, we hear from Mariano’s family and supporters as they launch a groundbreaking complaint against Canada at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for failure to investigate the Canadian Embassy’s role in putting Mariano at greater risk
CBC Radio-Canada | May 2, 2023 | Delphine Yung
Malgré un budget conséquent, le « policier » des entreprises canadiennes à l’étranger n’a publié aucune enquête en cinq ans. Certains réclament pourtant justice. C’est le cas au Guatemala, où des Autochtones exigent que le Canada prenne en main une situation qui leur est insoutenable : le vol de leurs terres par une minière canadienne.
Western Standard | April 5, 2023 | Shaun Polczer
Canada’s human rights record is being called into question ahead of a United Nations review of its diplomatic support for mining in Latin America.
The Justice and Corporate Accountability Project (JCAP), a Canada-based legal activist group, on Wednesday submitted a 30-page report to the UN Human Rights Council documenting what it said is “continued diplomatic support of mining companies over the safety of human rights and environment defenders” in Mexico, Guatemala, Peru and Ecuador.
Business in Vancouver | January 3, 2019 | Hayley Woodin
Activists are calling on Canadian and U.S. securities commissions to investigate two Vancouver-registered mining companies for what they say is a failure to properly inform shareholders of conflicts concerning Guatemala’s Escobal mine – one of the largest silver mining projects in the world.
Mongabay | July 24, 2020 | Chris Arsenault
Home to nearly half of the world’s major mining companies, Canada has failed to fully implement promised reforms to hold corporations accountable for abuses committed overseas, according human rights advocates. Ahead of its 2015 election win, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party promised to create an independent ombudsperson to investigate companies that violate human rights or poison the environment when extracting resources in the developing world, along with better protections for land rights campaigners there.
Globe and Mail | April 1, 2023 | Jose Olaya
In 2018, Ottawa announced a new watchdog to probe alleged abuses by multinationals. It has yet to complete a single investigation. The Globe went to Peruvian oil country to see the effects of missing Canadian oversight.
Canadian Dimension | March 6, 2023 | Kirsten Francescone
On January 18, 2023, as thousands of Peruvians were taking to the streets in Lima to denounce the spiralling political crisis in the country, Canadian Ambassador Louis Marcotte was meeting with the Peruvian Minister of Energy and Mines.
The Hill Times | December 22, 2022 | Kevin Philipupillai
A report from the Justice and Corporate Accountability Project uses access-to-information records to piece together how embassy and trade commission officials responded when Jennifer Moore of MiningWatch Canada was detained by Peruvian police in April 2017.
The Conversation | February 22, 2021 | Shin Imai and Sarah Colgrove
Investors in Canadian mining company Tahoe Resources paid a price when Tahoe failed to disclose the extent of community and Indigenous opposition to its Escobal mine in Guatemala a few years back. Its stock was flying high at $27 a share, but it fell after a string of lawsuits and violent conflicts — including security guards shooting protesters in the back.
Submission to the United Nations Working Group on Business & Human Rights | February 2018 | Charis Kamphuis
This submission summarizes the findings to date from a body of empirical research that has endeavored to identify the human rights impacts of Canada’s economic diplomacy policy. With this context, it reviews Canada’s existing policy framework as it applies to economic diplomacy in order to identify the gaps in existing policy from an international human rights law perspective.
Canadian Mining Accountability Abroad (video)
TVO Today | May 31, 2017 | The Agenda
Canadian companies that work in foreign jurisdictions are subject to the laws of the land they’re operating in. And that’s no less true for Canadian mining companies, who have interests around the world. The Agenda discusses the overseas responsibilities of Canadian mining companies.
Eco Americas | May 1, 2017 | Celeste Mackenzie
Well before his Liberal Party regained power in 2015, Canadian Member of Parliament John McKay argued for tighter government control over the conduct of Canada’s mining companies abroad, particularly in the areas of environment and human rights.
The Hill Times | March 15, 2017 | Charis Kamphuis, Shin Imai and Penelope Simons
Over 20,000 people from the mining industry gathered in Toronto for the annual conference of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada last week. This is known as one of the largest mining conferences in the world and reflects Canada’s worldwide dominance in the mining industry.
iPolitics | March 14, 2017 | James Munson
Allegations of harm by Canadian extractive companies overseas should be investigated by a federal ombudsperson, say professors joining an international campaign pushing the Liberal’s to follow through on a pledge made during the 2015 election campaign.
NOW Magazine | March 1, 2017 | Kate Klein, Merle Davis and Caren Weisbart
Canadian mining kills, but at the plant’s largest mining conference in Toronto this weekend, the industry will spin fantastical tales for investors that ignore the suffering of the communities bearing the brunt of its “successes”.
Lawyer’s Daily | February 17, 2017 | Kim Arnott
British Columbia’s top court is allowing seven Guatemalan residents to sue Canadian mining giant Tahoe Resources Inc. in Canada for a shooting that took place in Guatemala. The B.C. Court of Appeal’s unanimous decision in Garcia v Tahoe Inc. 2017 BCCA 39 should make Canadian companies with overseas operations take notice, says lawyers working on transnational human rights litigation.
Munk Global Conversations | February 5, 2017 | Kyle Jacques
On January 17 2007, a half-dozen armed men claiming to work for Hudbay Mineral Inc., a Canadian mining corporation, stormed the one-room house of a woman living in Lote Ocho Guatemala. The men took turns raping her, before dragging her from her home and setting it on fire. There were ten other reported incidents of gang rape in the community that day, and many other homes were torched.
Reno Gazette-Journal | September 6, 2016 | Jose Olivares
A mining company with offices in Reno is facing renewed scrutiny by a Canadian Guatemalan silver mine. The Justice and Corporate Accountability Project, which represents human rights asked the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate Tahoe Resources, a company that owns the Escobal Mine in southern Guatemala. The organizations did not disclose lawsuits to investors.
The Hill Times | August 31, 2016 | Danielle Ching and Charis Kamphuis
In June of 2016, Amnesty International called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to address the issue of human rights with the Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto during the “Three Amigos Summit.” Amnesty International and other human rights organizations drew attention to the dangers faced by human rights defenders who are threatened, intimidated, harassed and killed every year in Mexico as a reprisal for their work on behalf of persecuted people and indigenous communities. Our Prime Minister might also look at improving the record of Canadian embassies in supporting human rights defenders in Mexico and elsewhere.
Toronto Star | August 11, 2016 | Marco Chown Oved
A Toronto legal aid group is calling on the American securities regulator to investigate a Canadian mining company for failing to disclose a secret lawsuit aimed at preventing a referendum on its silver mine.
Global Sisters Report | May 26, 2016 | Malcolm Garcia
Global Sisters Report presents a special series on mining and extractive industries and the women religious who work to limit the damage and impact on people and the environment, through advocacy, action and policy. Pope Francis last year called for the entire mining sector to undergo “a radical paradigm change.” Sisters are on the front lines to help effect that change.
The Hill Times | April 27, 2016 | Peter Mazereeuw
While human rights groups are pushing for stronger government oversight of mining companies’ conduct abroad, executives from a national mining lobby group say Canadian courts and existing mediation bodies should be allowed to do their work.
Al Jazeera | April 1, 2016 | Lisa Laventure
Communities at the centre of oil exploration caught between a desire for development and the reality of damaged land.
Embassy | February 17, 2016 | Peter Mazereeuw
The Trudeau government will continue to support a Harper-era organization that aims to help developing countries to grow and regulate their mining industries. That support, confirmed by a spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada, comes despite ongoing criticism of the organization known as the Canadian International Resources and Development Institute from a student-led advocacy group, as well as MiningWatch Canada.
Embassy | February 2, 2016 | Peter Mazereeuw
The Trudeau government won’t be making changes to the role of a controversial corporate social responsibility counsellor for the mining sector, according to a government spokesperson. The Office of the Extractive Sector Corporate Social Responsibility Counsellor has been criticized in the past by advocates for tougher action by Canada on human rights abuses connected to Canadian-owned mines abroad.
OHS Canada | April 22, 2015 | Carmelle Wolfson
Canada’s mining industry accounts for nearly half of the world’s mining and mineral-exploration activity. But who holds Canadian operations abroad accountable when workplace-safety violations occur, and what standards are they required to live up to? Claims of Canadian companies disregarding the rights of foreign workers and changes to Canada’s corporate social responsibility strategy are throwing a spotlight on the way our extractive sector does business abroad.
Huffington Post | April 16, 2015 | Ben Hallmand and Roxana Olivera
LA PAJUELA, Peru — It started as just another farm chore for Elvira Flores, a teenage shepherd in the northern Andean highlands. On Sept. 8, 2013, Flores drove her flock across a dirt road that crosses her family’s rocky green fields and down to a stream. After the sheep drank their fill, something went wrong. “All of a sudden they started to jump, kick their bellies and hit their heads against the ground,” the shy 16-year-old recalled on a blustery afternoon a year later, clutching her sweater to ward off the chill. “White foam came out of their mouths and noses.”
Huffington Post | February 17, 2015 | Joseph Kirschke
For Vancouver-based Nevsun Resources Ltd., the timing could hardly have been worse: Just as Canada issued its latest corporate social responsibility (CSR) standards for extractive companies in November, the Eritrea-focused miner was sued over “forced” labor allegations at its copper-gold project 90 miles east of Asmara, the capital. The British Columbia Supreme Court filing followed a 2013 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report alleging employment of pressganged military conscripts at the operation, a 60:40 joint venture with the “pariah” government. “Based on company-led and third-party audits,” countered CEO Cliff Davis, “the Bisha mine has adhered to international standards of governance, health and safety.”
Embassy | November 5, 2014 | Shin Imai
On October 28, 2014, I appeared before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, DC with a member of the Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability, as group of 29 human rights, environmental, labour, religious and social justice organizations. We called upon Canada to put in place a framework for addressing allegations of human rights abuses associated with Canadian mining. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and two other UN bodies have already urged Canada to put in place such a legal framework.
Inter Press Service | October 31, 2015 | Carey Biron
The Canadian government is failing either to investigate or to hold the country’s massive extractives sector accountable for rights abuses committed in Latin American countries, according to petitioners who testified here Tuesday before an international tribunal.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) also heard concerns that the Canadian government is not making the country’s legal system available to victims of these abuses.
Impact of Canadian Mining Activities on Human Rights In Latin America (video)
Public Hearing on the 153rd Session of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights | October 28, 2014
The petitioners alleged that the Canadian State plays a central role in enabling the adverse human rights impacts of Canadian mining companies abroad through acts of commission and omission, such as the exercise of mining diplomacy, on the one hand, and the absence of policies and laws that address the extraterritorial impacts of Canadian mining, on the other.
Law Times | October 20, 2014 | Sarah Molyneaux and Shin Imai
In a case that once again demonstrates the lack of international legal protections, a civil suit filed against Tahoe Resources Inc. alleges the Vancouver-headquartered mining company is liable for injuries sustained by seven Guatemalan men at a protest in April 2013.
BBC News | June 6, 2014 | Nina Lakhani
On the outskirts of San Rafael las Flores, the Escobal silver mine is an imposing complex of smoking chimneys, processing plants, huge heaps of earth and dozens of trucks, bustling 24 hours a day under the watchful gaze of armed security. The deep underground mine, owned by Canadian company Tahoe Resources, is slap bang in the middle of Guatemala’s southern agricultural heartlands where most families eke out a living growing maize, beans, coffee, avocados, cabbage, bananas and peaches.
Globe and Mail | July 31, 2013 | Shin Imai
Last week the Ontario Superior Court of Justice released a path-breaking decision, Choc v. Hudbay Minerals, that might, for the first time, require a Canadian mining company to take legal responsibility for human rights abuses abroad. The case concerns the alleged gang rape of indigenous women and the murder of an indigenous leader. Both are alleged to have occurred in Guatemala in the course of an ongoing dispute over indigenous land rights at the site of a mine owned by HudBay’s Guatemalan subsidiary.
