On Thursday, November 14, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced an Action Plan for enhancing the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP). The Action Plan provides a comprehensive set of goals and actions, including actions that would incorporate labor rights considerations into SIMP.

ICAR and HUA comment to express support for the National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS) proposal to amend the definition of illegal, unreported, or unregulated (IUU) fishing to include fishing activities beyond national jurisdiction that involve the use of forced labor.

ICAR Applauds the Biden Administration’s Statement on Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing and Forced Labor While Encouraging Broader Data Collection and Analysis

To support enforcement of Section 307 of the Tariff Act and the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), ICAR urges the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force (FLETF) to require companies that import goods into the United States to accurately trace their supply chains for those goods and report comprehensive supply chain information to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as a condition of entry.

A new report by the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR) and Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) finds that leveraging existing conservation tools to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing increases the U.S. government’s ability to stop goods produced by forced labor from entering our ports.

Sanctions represent an essential part of the U.S. foreign policy toolkit, yet human rights practitioners and advocates often lack the essential understanding of how they work.

The International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR) is pleased to announce the release of its new report “Tools of Trade: The Use of U.S. Generalized System of Preferences to Promote Labor Rights for All.”

The Rohingya, an ethnic minority in Burma, have been subject to decades of abuse and persecution by the Burmese military following the country’s independence in 1948. Over the last five years, this military-driven oppression and violence has intensified.

Corporate influence over the global trade and investment regime has resulted in trade and investment policy, agreements, and enforcement structures that favor corporate interests at the expense of human rights and environmental protections. Recently, new political challenges to global trade and investment have emerged, and States have started re-thinking alternatives to the existing framework.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Professor Philip Alston, will conduct a country visit to the United States in December, and has asked interested parties to provide information on the interlinkages between poverty and realization of human rights in the context of the United States. ICAR prepared a submission on this topic to highlight how corporate influence of U.S. trade policies has become a key driver to poverty in the United States.

The International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR) and the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) are pleased to release a briefer on Investment-related Dispute Settlement: Towards Comprehensive Accountability and Inclusive Access to Remedy.