Unocal settles in Burma human rights case.

• Author: Chafe, Zoe
• Position: ENVIRONMENTAL Intelligence

Eight years after filing suit in the United States against the multinational energy corporation Unocal, a group of Burmese villagers learned in December that they would be compensated for human rights abuses--including forced labor, rape, and murder--carried out by soldiers hired to guard a pipeline partially owned by the company. The villagers, who lived along the 400 kilometer-long Yadana natural gas pipeline in Myanmar, alleged that a Unocal subsidiary contracted the Burmese military to secure the corridor during construction, despite prior knowledge of the ruling junta's lackluster human rights record.

While similar cases have been filed in recent years, the Unocal settlement marks the first time that a company has agreed to pay damages under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), a law created by the first U.S. Congress in 1789 that allows foreign nationals to bring suit in the United States for certain atrocities committed abroad. In 1997, a judge ruled that under ATCA corporations and their executives could be held liable for their actions outside the United States. The Supreme Court upheld the law in a 2004 decision, while limiting the scope of violations that could be cited under the statute.

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