S07E13 (Ken Saro Wiwa tribute) The View from Beyond (Nnimmo Bassey, Bronwen Manby, Bennett Freeman)

Voices - Conversations on Business and Human Rights from Around the World

To mark the 25th year of the deaths of the Ogoni Nine - nine men who were executed by a brutal military regime in Nigeria in response to their activism against oil extraction in Ogoniland - IHRB presents a series of conversations about the significance of their struggle and impact of their leader Ken Saro Wiwa. In this episode - The View from Beyond - Salil Tripathi speaks with Nnimmo Bassey, Rafto Laureate, human rights defender, poet, and environmental activist; Bronwen Manby who co-authored The Price of Oil, Human Rights Watch’s path-breaking research report on the violence in the Niger Delta; Paul Hoffman, who argued the Wiwa case before the US Supreme Court under the Alien Tort Statute; and Bennett Freeman, who was a senior US State Department official who brought together oil and mining companies, governments, and international human rights groups to prepare the Voluntary Principles for Security and Human Rights. They discuss how the Ogoni struggle in Nigeria shaped the modern business and human rights movement; the litigations that followed; the lack of political and corporate accountability in an oil-rich nation where the military was a major factor, and; the state of human rights.