Global: Dow shareholders must help ensure justice for victims of Bhopal disaster

Amnesty International is urging shareholders in the US-based Dow to consider withdrawing their investment from the chemicals company if it fails to rapidly meet its human rights responsibilities towards the more than 500,000 people still suffering from the Bhopal disaster, one of the world’s worst industrial incidents. Ahead of the company’s annual general meeting tomorrow 11 April, Amnesty International has written to Dow’s largest investors, sharing its recent report Bhopal: 40 Years of Injustice , and asking them to help address Dow’s failure to adhere to international business and human rights standards since it purchased Union Carbide Corporation in 2001. Union Carbide Corporation was the ultimate owner of the pesticide plant in the Indian city of Bhopal at the time of the disastrous gas leak in 1984. Mark Dummett, Amnesty International’s Head of Business and Human Rights said: “Bhopal is not a case of the past. The human rights abuses resulting from the gas leak and site contamination are unresolved and ongoing. Survivors and their descendants are still awaiting just compensation, a thorough clean-up of their environment, adequate medical assistance and treatment, punishment of all perpetrators, and comprehensive economic and social rehabilitation.” “We have written to major investors in Dow and asked them to engage with us and to raise concerns directly with the company about the continuing human rights abuses in Bhopal. We have asked shareholders to end their relationship with Dow if it fails to take meaningful and rapid action to address the suffering.”