NGO Watch®

Oxfam Pushes Food Companies to Reform Supply Chains

April 22, 2016

In its annual update on its Behind the Brands campaign, the nongovernmental organization Oxfam calls on food and beverage businesses to go beyond social and environmental commitments and to use their influence to impose these commitments on suppliers to ensure "a more sustainable food system."
NGOs Use US Law to Challenge Business Supply Chains

April 22, 2016

Tim Fernholz writes that nongovernmental organizations ("NGOs") are preparing to use new US legislation to force federal authorities to halt the importation of products whose often-complex supply chains include what these NGOs assert to be forced labor.
HRW: UN Climate Deal Requires "Urgent" Human Rights Action

April 20, 2016

Katharina Rall of Human Rights Watch ("HRW") warns that nongovernmental organizations will be ramping up pressure on governments to "urgently" implement portions of the UN deal on climate change that call on governments to "respect, promote and consider" human rights in addressing global warming.
Groves Counters Proposed Global Ban on Autonomous Weapons

April 14, 2016

Steven Groves of the Heritage Foundation has published a report calling for the US to resist demands from nongovernmental organizations and other governments to ban the development of so-called "lethal autonomous weapons systems" ("LAWS") and to instead develop a manual on how countries should apply international laws on warfare to the development of LAWS.
HRW: US Information Sharing Could Violate Rights

April 14, 2016

Human Rights Watch ("HRW") asserts that the international human rights agenda may prevent US domestic law-enforcement agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation from accessing information obtained by the National Security Agency through warrantless surveillance techniques.
NGOs Outline Agenda for Next UN Secretary-General

April 14, 2016

A group of nongovernmental organizations, including Amnesty International, has produced an eight-point agenda for the next UN Secretary-General, who will be nominated by the end of 2016, including a "new global approach to refugees" and strengthening the UN's human rights agenda.
NGOs Hold Meeting on Global Nuclear Weapons Prohibition

April 11, 2016

The nongovernmental organizations Institute for Security Studies, International Law and Policy Institute, and International Committee of the Red Cross recently held a meeting in South Africa with representatives of African governments to discuss paths toward the development of an international, legally binding instrument that would prohibit nuclear weapons.
NGO Claims Victory as G4S Sells Stakes in Israel

March 30, 2016

The nongovernmental organization Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, which seeks to encourage the cutting of ties between businesses and Israeli territories in order to encourage change in the country's policies toward Palestine, is taking credit for the decision of British security company G4S to sell its operations in Israel.
NGO Seeks Action from Climate Fund After UN Paris Deal

March 29, 2016

Sven Harmeling from CARE International has called for more and urgent action from the UN's Green Climate Fund to fund the mitigation of climate change impacts in line with the December 2015 UN agreement in Paris on combating global warming.
AI Urges UN Scrutiny of UK Surveillance Bill

March 28, 2016

Amnesty International ("AI") has published an open letter to UN Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy Joseph Cannataci urging him to focus attention on and express his concerns about the proposed UK Investigatory Powers Bill, which AI argues provides for mass surveillance without adequate protections for requirements of individualized suspicion or for the right to privacy.