FOLLOW-UP
Bhopal: A Decade Later

--Kristin Leutwyler
Scientific American: News: In Brief: May 1997

   Il était minuit cinq à Bhopal  Dominique Lapierre, Javier Moro, Editions Robert Laffont, 2001

Dominique Lapierre nous emmène dans l'Inde des maharajas et l'Amérique de la haute technologie pour nous raconter l'une des plus grandes tragédies industrielles de l'histoire.

Dans la nuit du 2 au 3 décembre 1984, se produisait dans l'antique cité indienne de Bhopal la plus grande catastrophe industrielle de l'histoire : une fuite de gaz toxiques dans une usine de pesticides, qui fit entre seize et trente mille morts et cinq cents mille blessés.

Ce livre raconte l'extraordinaire aventure humaine et technologique qui a abouti à cette catastrophe. C'est une fresque d'amour, d'héroïsme, de folie et d'espérance où se télescopent des centaines de personnages, de situations, d'aventures.

Un paysan indien chassé de sa terre par une nuée de pucerons assassins - Trois entomologistes new-yorkais qui inventent un pesticide miracle -Un géant de la chimie qui trouve le gaz nécessaire à sa fabrication - De jeunes ingénieurs d'Occident voulant supprimer les famines du tiers-monde... Une usine manipulant les produits les plus toxiques de l'industrie chimique et se croyant "aussi innocente qu'une fabrique de chocolats" -Les rêves, les joies et les fêtes des damnés d'un bidonville. Une mystérieuse cité orientale au coeur des Mille et Une Nuits. Des descendants de maharajas et des eunuques qui ensorcellent des expatriés de Virginie. Un journaliste visionnaire qui prêche dans le désert. Un ouvrier fou de poésie qui déclenche l'apocalypse. Des médecins héroïques qui s'empoisonnent en ranimant les victimes par le bouche à bouche. Une jeune Indienne qui échappe aux flammes du bûcher grâce à la petite croix qu'elle porte autour du cou. Et une multitude d'autres épisodes chargés de suspense et de rebondissement.
Il était minuit cinq à Bhopal, une tragédie vraie au coeur de notre temps qui est un avertissement à tous les apprentis sorciers qui menacent l'avenir de notre planète.

CETIM    Centre Europe - Tiers Monde

	DOSSIER Sociétés transnationales et droits humains Transnational Corporation and Human Rights Empresas transnacionales y derechos humanos
	I.8 The Bhopal tragedy
	Did Union Carbide corporation commit crimes against humanity?
	By Ward Morehouse, President, Council on International and Public Affairs, Co-Director, Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy*

1. The World's Worst Industrial Disaster: what happened and how[1]

It was around midnight on the night of 2 December 1984 in the central Indian city of Bhopal. Bano Bi was sewing clothes in her home, sitting next to the door:

« The children's father had just returned from a poetry concert. He came in and asked me, 'what are you burning that makes me choke?' And then it became quite unbearable. The children sleeping inside began to cough. I spread a mat outside and made the children sit on it. Outside we started coughing even more violently and became breathless. Then our landlord and my husband went out to see what was happening. They found out that some gas had leaked. Outside there were people shouting. « Run, run, run for your lives. »

Unfortunately Bano Bi and her family could not run fast or far enough to escape the methyl isocyanate gas leaking from a nearby pesticide plant owned by the US company, Union Carbide. She and her husband were both hospitalized; he died a few weeks later, one of the unknown thousands killed by the incident that ranks with Chernobyl as the world's worst industrial disaster.

Bano Bi's suffering is far from over; she is still ill and is not entitled to any compensation for the death of her husband:

« (My husband) was always treated for gas related problems. He was never treated for tuberculosis. And yet, in his post mortem report, they mentioned that he died due to tuberculosis. He was medically examined for compensation but they never told us in which category he was put. And now they tell me that his death was not due to gas exposure, that I can not get the relief of 10,000 rupees (US$330) which is given to the relatives of the dead.

I have pain in my chest and I get breathless when I walk. The doctors told me that I need to be operated on for ulcers in my stomach. They told me it would cost 10'000 rupees. I do not have so much money. All the jewelry that I had has been sold... How can I go for the operation? Also, I am afraid that if I die during the operation, there would be no one to look after my children. »

Bano Bi's story is typical of many who were downwind of the Carbide plant at the time. Not only have they lost relatives and friends and their health, but for fifteen years they have been fighting an unfinished battle to acquire even a paltry amount of compensation. When the Bhopal disaster happened, it was a clear case of gross corporate irresponsibility; fifteen years on it has become a classic case of corporate impunity.

Bhopal was not an accident. It was a disaster waiting to happen - a textbook case of corporate failure to meet even the most minimal standards of proper social performance with regard to human safety and the physical environment. Where there were choices to be made, the Carbide management opted to maximize profit and minimize loss, even though they knew they were playing with innocent people's lives and putting conventional criteria of economic performance before human safety.

It was the US company's management which specifically overrode the wishes of the managers of its Indian subsidiary, Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) and insisted on storing methyl isocyanate (MIC), a key ingredient in pesticide manufacture, in large 15,000-gallon tanks rather than in smaller, less dangerous, individual containers used by other companies making similar products. It was in one of these large tanks - the one supposed to act as a backup for emergency transfers in case of damage to two other neighboring storage tanks - that the runaway reaction which gassed the city of Bhopal started. This tank was filled to 75-87 per cent capacity, even though Union Carbide's operations manuals state that MIC storage tanks should never be filled more than half full to allow room for expansion. The liquid MIC in these tanks should have been stored at 0°C, to minimize the possibility of a reaction. Yet the storage tanks at the Bhopal plant were at ambient temperature, around 20°C, because the refrigeration unit for the tank had been disconnected - the freon gas in the refrigeration unit was being used elsewhere in the plant.

The safety systems that should have contained any such reaction were also inadequate. One of these, the vent gas scrubber, was supposed to « neutralize any escaping gases; yet at the height of the disaster, MIC and its reaction products were flowing through the scrubber at more than 200 times its capacity. The flare tower - a device intended to burn off any escaping gases - was not equipped with a back-up ignition system. But even if it had been, the flare tower would not have had the capacity to handle such a huge volume of gases as escaped in Bhopal. Moreover, the flare tower was not working when the leak occurred because a faulty section of pipe had been removed and not replaced. Finally, the water spray system, which was supposed to deal with any gases that escaped through the vent gas scrubber and the flare tower, did not have enough water pressure to reach the point from which gas was escaping.

All these problems were known to Carbide management and engineers. They could have been corrected - but only at an increased cost of construction and operation of the facility.

Even the location of the plant was dictated by a preoccupation with cost-cutting. Although a sparsely populated site outside Bhopal, a city of some 800,000 people, had already been designated as an industrial area for hazardous facilities, Union Carbide insisted on building in 1979 the acutely hazardous MIC production and storage unit at an existing Union Carbide facility upwind from the city, mainly because it was cheaper to draw on the infrastructure of the existing facility.

Union Carbide's disregard for the safety and well-being of its workers and the surrounding community was also reflected in the company's personnel policies and procedures. Between 1980 and 1984, the work crew for the MIC unit was out in half, from twelve to six workers, while the maintenance supervisor position had been eliminated from the work shift on duty at the time of the disaster. The effectiveness of plant personnel was also adversely affected by high rates of turnover, and several workers in key positions in the MIC unit were not properly trained to handle their responsibilities.

These problems were known to senior US Carbide management and cannot be blamed on its Indian subsidiary as the parent company has tried to do. Indeed, the Bhopal plant had long been plagued with serious accidents involving severe injuries and at least one death. These accidents were reported to the US management and led to a safety-audit in 1982 by a team sent from the United States. Carbide did little to see that the recommendations of this audit were carried out.

The company was also warned of the possibility of a runaway reaction involving a MIC storage tank three months prior to the Bhopal leak by its safety and health inspectors based in Institute, West Virginia. Had the warnings in this report been heeded, and the suggested action plans implemented in Bhopal (including more frequent sampling of storage tanks for impurities), perhaps the Bhopal disaster could have been averted. But Union Carbide did not even send the report to the Bhopal plant.

The reasons for Union Carbide's disregard for safety are not difficult to divine. The Bhopal plant was losing money and the Indian market for the pesticides it was producing had not developed as Carbide had hoped it would. The US management had at one point decided to dismantle the plant in India and relocate four of the units, including the MIC unit, to Mexico or Indonesia. The plan met with strong resistance from UCIL management and was aborted.

2. The Denial of Justice: The Role of Union Carbide Corporation, Indian Government, and US and Indian Courts

Another factor that may account for Union Carbide's irresponsibility is the fact that almost all of those affected by the accident were poor, even by Indian standards, and hence powerless to lobby for better safety measures or sue the company in the event of an accident. The reason for this is simple: those who have a choice rarely live downwind of a dangerous industrial plant.

No one knows exactly how many people died or were injured in the accident. The Indian government acknowledges that 521,262 persons were « exposed » to the gas leak. Estimates range from the official figure of 1,754 dead and 200,000 injured, given by the government in its lawsuit against Union Carbide, to 15,000 dead and 300,000 injured, according to eyewitness accounts and local voluntary agencies. Circumstantial evident based on the number of shrouds and the amount of cremation wood sold in the following weeks suggest that as many as 10,000 people may have died - a figure also put forward by a senior UNICEF official after a week-long investigation.

Some say that those who died are the lucky ones, since many survivors have continued to suffer severe physical and psychological pain and debilitation. It was initially thought that the major impact of MIC on human beings was on their eyes and lungs, and indeed tens of thousands of people have suffered lasting damage to these organs. But new medical evidence is surfacing which indicates still more serious long-term threats to human health. Other vital organs such as the kidney, spleen and liver have been damaged, as have the reproductive systems of women. There is also evidence of damage to the immune systems of those exposed to the gas, leaving them more susceptible to a wide range of diseases endemic among poor people in India, such as tuberculosis; and the genetic mutation affecting the offspring of those exposed. The International Medical Commission on Bhopal, composed of 15 volunteer health professionals from all over the world, visited India in January 1994 and found, along with corroborating evidence of damage to various vital organs and the body's immune system, disturbing evidence of neurological damage as well.

The effects of exposure to MIC have destroyed the ability of those affected to earn a living. In the past, most of them, like Bano Bi's husband, worked as casual laborers, but many can no longer sustain vigorous physical effort. However, instead of help and sympathy, the victims have more often than not been subjected to neglect, harassment and abuse.

Since the explosion, more than 600,000 claims have been filed with the Indian government against Union Carbide (with at least another 200,000 claims still unregistered). The company has fought tooth-and-nail to avoid paying anything more than a token amount of compensation - although on its own admission, it has spent about $50 million on legal fees.

The initial objective of the lawyers was to get the proceedings for compensation transferred from New York - where lawyers representing the claimants and the government of India on behalf of all the victims first filed claims in 1985 - to India. The company argued that the US courts were not the proper forum for the trial which should instead be held in Indian courts which, it claimed, were competent to decide the issue. After a year, the case was indeed transferred to India.

Once in India, Union Carbide switched its argument; it now claimed the Indian courts were not competent and at every opportunity insisted that the company's rights of due process were being violated. It appealed virtually every decision of the trial court, even on minor procedural matters, not only to the High Court of Madhya Pradesh, the state in which Bhopal is located, but even to the Indian Supreme Court.

For example, when the Bhopal District Court ordered Union Carbide to pay interim relief of $270 million, Carbide refused to obey and appealed to the Madhya Pradesh High Court. When the High Court upheld the lower court ruling, the company again refused to obey the order and appealed to the Indian Supreme Court. This process lasted more than a year. The company has also tried at different times to blame its Indian subsidiary, UCIL, or a « disgruntled worker ».

The litigation dragged on until February 1989 when unexpectedly the Indian government under Rajiv Gandhi agreed to a settlement « ordered » by the Indian Supreme Court of $470 million. This sum, equivalent to only $793 for each of the 592,000 who had then filed claims, was not even sufficient to cover healthcare and monitoring of the gas-exposed population, which had been conservatively estimated at $600 million over the next 20 to 30 years. The settlement was so favorable for Union Carbide that its stock price rose $2 a share on the New York Stock Exchange the day it was announced.

The settlement provoked widespread public indignation and was immediately challenged in court by victim groups, and subsequently, by a new Indian government under V.P. Singh. It was upheld in October 1991 by the Indian Supreme Court, but this court also reinstated criminal charges of culpable homicide first made in 1985 against Union Carbide Corporation, its Indian subsidiary and senior officials of both companies that had been quashed by the February 1989 « settlement ».

Union Carbide's delaying tactics and its attempt to « blame the victim » have been predictable, but their success has been due to a measure of complicity from the Indian government and the Madhya Pradesh State government. In part, this complicity stems from the circumstance that the Indian government has conceded that Carbide will never be made fully accountable for the damage it has caused. Indeed, the Indian Supreme Court has held that if the settlement money should prove insufficient, the Indian government should make up the difference. The government, therefore, has an interest in minimizing the financial impact of the disaster, demanding impossible types of medical evidence to substantiate claims, and approving only trivial awards so that the settlement money is not exhausted.

There may, however, be other reasons for the Indian government's reluctance to prosecute Union Carbide vigorously. The government's New Economic Policy is heavily influenced, if not imposed, by the World Bank and the IMF. It has also signed the new GATT agreement, which critics see as a naked power grab by multinationals to facilitate their access to Southern economies, thereby shoring up the North's domination of the international economy.

To prosecute and force a realistic settlement out of Union Carbide might not only deter multinationals from investing in India, but would also raise questions about the Indian government's policy of deregulation and undermining existing regulations in order to attract transnational corporations. Although the Bhopal disaster provided the government with a powerful opportunity to force multinational companies to implement stricter safety and environmental precautions, prohibitions against siting industrial facilities in ecologically sensitive zones have been eliminated, and protected areas are being « denotified » so that cement plants, oil refineries and dams can be built.[2]

3. The Plight of the Victims and the Failure of Judicial Institutions

The plight of many of the survivors continues to get worse as the long-term health effects of their exposure to the gases escaping from the Union Carbide pesticide plant became more severe. Their fundamental human rights have been egregiously violated. And the courts in both India and the United States have done little thus far to ease their suffering.

The Right to Life is « a fundamental right in any society, irrespective of its degree of development or the type of culture which characterizes it... »[3] This right has been construed to also encompass protection of life-sustaining environmental elements such as food and water.[4] The Bhopal accident deprived people of their right to life, as well as their rights to health, livelihood and security of person.

In the last fifteen years since the chemical accident, there have been few positive changes in Bhopal. Union Carbide's pesticide factory remains abandoned and contaminated, leaking toxic chemicals into the nearby slum. At least sixteen thousand people have died so far from injuries related to their toxic chemical exposure fifteen years ago.

The right to compensation for injuries has been poorly enforced in India. Of the claims processed so far, 90% of the claimants have received only $400 for their personal injuries, which is barely enough to cover medications for five years. Unfortunately, the courts do not understand the long term health impacts related to peoples' toxic exposure. People are suffering from significant immune system collapse, which contributes to many other illnesses not covered by the settlement.

Criminal justice has not been fully enforced either. Despite an extradition order pending since March 1992, the Indian government has made no moves to bring former Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson to criminal trial. Instead, the government is courting chemical companies to expand their manufacturing capacity in India, as well as allowing companies like Monsanto to introduce genetically engineered crops to replace traditional farming practices.

For Union Carbide and the Indian government, the Bhopal incident was a public relations fiasco that is fading from the public's memory. In its 1989 annual report, Union Carbide told its shareholders that the Bhopal gas leak had cost them 43 cents per share. The horrible suffering of over a half million people was thereby reduced to 43 cents per share. Though people in Bhopal remain sick and dying, with the recent merger of Union Carbide and Dow Chemical, even the name Union Carbide will soon disappear.

The bright sign in this otherwise bleak landscape is that people have continued to struggle for their lives and for justice. There have been more than one hundred protests in Delhi and Bhopal. After the visit of the international medical commission to Bhopal, the survivors themselves set up a model health clinic in 1997 to attend to the wounded, and have shared their stories with citizen groups around the world. People in Bhopal have not given up.

In November, 1999 a class action lawsuit on behalf of Bhopal survivors against Union Carbide was filed in the Federal District Court for Southern New York under the Alien Tort Claims Act.[5] The lawsuit alleges major human rights violations. It says the company employed double standards in operating its Bhopal factory (compared to its West Virginia factory) and had reckless disregard of its own safety audits and advance warning signals of a potential disaster. According to the suit these constitute « incontrovertible proof of systematic racial discrimination as a matter of corporate policy on the part of Union Carbide... » in operating the Bhopal pesticides factory. The lawsuit also alleges that « Union Carbide's conduct amounted to a violation of international criminal law which prohibits widespread or systematic killings or other inhumane acts perpetrated against a civilian population ».

The lawsuit was introduced against the backdrop of a pending merger between Union Carbide and Dow Chemical, which would create the world's second largest chemical company. The Bhopal survivors strongly believe, and the lawsuit asserts, that regardless of any merger, Union Carbide and its key officials are guilty of crimes against humanity and must be held accountable for those crimes.[6]

For at least the last decade and a half, one of the overriding lessons of the Bhopal tragedy has been the abject failure of established judicial institutions to hold those responsible for this great disaster accountable for their misdeeds. The last hope of the survivors for justice now lies in two courtrooms half a world apart - the Federal District Court in New York and the Magistrate's Court in Bhopal. While hope springs eternal, no realistic observer of what has happened to the people of Bhopal in the last fifteen years offers much encouragement for the future. Nonetheless, this struggle for justice must go on.

4. Alternative Forums in the Quest for Justice

Denied their day in court, the survivors of the world's worst industrial disaster have sought alternative forums where their voices can be heard and their grievances sympathetically considered. One of these took place in Bhopal in October 1992 under the auspices of the Permanent People's Tribunal. More recently (March 2000) another session of the Permanent People's Tribunal was held at the University of Warwick in the UK on Global Corporations and Human Wrongs. Here are the findings and basic conclusions of that tribunal as adapted by the author :

The Tribunal confirms the accusations against Union Carbide by the 1992 Permanent People's Tribunal which found:

1. « Criminal negligence of the health and safety of the people living in the areas surrounding the factory in Bhopal, and the workers in the factory firstly by installing unsound technology to produce the pesticides in the plant and secondly by failure to maintain minimum safety standards in the plant.

2. In the aftermath of the release of lethal toxic gases from the plant, failing to provide information to enable those affected to be treated.

3.       Failing to respond to the need for adequate compensation to the victims of the company's negligence and avoiding all legitimate claims.

Additional accusations based on findings since 1992 :

4. Grave violations of international law and fundamental human rights under the provisions of the US Alien Tort Claims Act.

5. Failure to respond to new evidence of the impact on the health of over 120,000 children, women and men who suffer acutely from a large number of illnesses related to exposure.

6. Ignoring environmental degradation arising from its activities in and around the Bhopal site. »

The case against Union Carbide presented to the Tribunal also included evidence that there was probable cause to believe that Union Carbide Corporation had committed crimes against humanity as defined under international and Canadian law and that the Union Carbide Corporation charter was subject to revocation under Section 1101 of the New York Business Corporation Law.

Ultimately the case against Union Carbide must be understood in human terms. The following excerpts from a letter written to « those Carbide people » by one of the survivors who lost both her husband and her eldest son, Sajida Bano, sum up the human dimensions of this great tragedy:

« Big people like you have snatched the peace and happiness of poor people. You are living it up in big palaces and mansions. Moving around in cars. Have you ever thought that you have wiped away the marriage marks from our foreheads, emptied our laps of children, bathed us in poison, and we are sobbing but death doesn't come. Like a living walking corpse you have left us. At least tell us what our crime was, for such a big punishment has been given...

You put your hand on your heart and think, if you are a human being: if this happened to you, how would your wife and children feel ? Only this one sentence must have caused you pain... » (translated by Suketu Mehta and published in « Bhopal Lives », Village Voice, December 3, 1996.)

The PPT held a session on Industrial and Environmental Hazards and Human Rights in Bhopal between 19-24 October 1992. The conclusions and judgment of the Tribunal have been presented to this tribunal. The 1992 Tribunal found the Government of India and the Government of Madhya Pradesh « clearly guilty of violating the rights of the victims ». The 1992 Tribunal found UCC and its Indian subsidiary « guilty of having caused the world's worst industrial disaster through the design and operation of the carbide factory in Bhopal », by failing to provide sound technology; failing to maintain minimal safeguards at the plant; failing to provide information following the disaster to ensure people could be treated for the effects of the toxic gases released; and by avoiding their responsibility to provide compensation for the pain, suffering and loss of livelihoods which victims have suffered.

Evidence has been produced before the Warwick Tribunal which reinforces the findings of the 1992 Tribunal. Fresh material on developments since 1992 clearly establishes the long-term impact of the Bhopal disaster on life and the health of the victims and environmental degradation that is spreading to the entire region. The 1994 Report of the International Medical Commission also clearly recommended that « a substantial reorganization of the health care delivery system in required to recognize that the current needs of the affected population are different from those in the initial phase of the tragedy » and that « a controlled evaluation of carefully planned intervention including rehabilitation and pharmacological strategies is needed ». The Commission also recommended that « the disease categories recognized as related to the gas release should be broadened to specifically include neurotoxic injury and post-traumatic stress disorders ».

Unfortunately due to callous attitude of the Government of India and the continuing intransigence of Union Carbide, none of these and other recommendations of the International Medical Commission have been acted upon. Even after 15 years of the disaster, 10-15 persons continue to die each month from exposure-related diseases and their complications. The Government agency for recording disaster related deaths was closed down at the end of 1992. However, subsequent autopsy reports have clearly established that due to exposure to gas, the deaths continue to occur. Even after 15 years, there are over 120,000 children, women and men who continue to suffer acutely from a number of exposure related illnesses and their complications. The environmental degradation has become more and more clear and continues to strike the people there. Various subsoil tests in and around Carbide's Bhopal plant indicate that environmental degradation of the region commenced even prior to the 1984 disaster for which UCC is directly responsible.

The attention of the Tribunal has been drawn to the complaint filed in November 1999 against UCC before the US District Court in New York for grave violations of international law and fundamental human rights, under the provisions of the Alien Tort Claims Act.

On consideration of the evidence produced, the Tribunal finds that it has been prima facie established that UCC has committed acts of gross negligence and environmental degradation resulting in continuous deaths, illness and sufferings of the people. UCC has also shown a totally irresponsible attitude towards Indian courts and the legal processes. The summons issued by the Indian courts continue to be defied by those accused of criminal negligence in respect of the Bhopal disaster.

The Tribunal finds that in view of the enormity of the scale of the impact of its actions affecting the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, and its systematic callous behavior towards its obligations, Union Carbide should be brought before a court which recognizes international corporate criminal responsibility.[7]

5. Union Carbide Corporation, Crimes Against Humanity and the Need for New International Judicial Machinery

Crimes against humanity have been defined under international and Canadian law as meaning « ...murder, extermination, deportation, persecution or any other inhumane act or omission that is committed against any civilian population or any identified persons...and that...constitutes a contravention of customary international law or conventional international law or is criminal according to the general principles of law recognized by the Community of Nations » (emphasis added).[8]

The United Nations International Law Commission has been engaged in its recent sessions elaborating on the definition given above, making it even more applicable to the actions of giant global corporations. It makes explicit what is implicit in the Nuremberg charter - namely, that inhumane acts become crimes against humanity when they are « committed in a systematic way or on a large scale and instigated or directed by a government or by any organization or group. » The reference to « any organization or group » clearly indicates non-state actors such as global corporations bigger than most nation states.[9]

In applying these tests and this definition to Union Carbide's behavior before, during, and after it caused the world's worst industrial disaster, there is a prima facie case that there is « probable cause to believe » that Union Carbide did indeed commit crimes against humanity in Bhopal. However, we lack judicial institutions to deal with such destructive behavior.

The International Court of Justice is restricted to dealing with conflicts between nation states. The International Criminal Court now in the process of being established has specifically excluded corporations from its mandate. The time has therefore come to launch a process of investigation, deliberation, and reflection on how best to remedy this serious omission in the world's machinery for dealing with egregious violations of human rights, as the first step toward crating an international court on corporate crime.[10]

* For information: Council on International and Public Affairs, 777 United Nations Plaza, Suite 3C, New York, NY 10017, Tel. 212-972-9877, Fax 212-972-9878, E-mail: cipany@igc.org

[1] Excerpted from Ward Morehouse, « Unfinished Business: Bhopal Ten Years After », The Ecologist, September/October 1994, pp. 164-166.

[2] A detailed judicial history of the Bhopal disaster is given in the complaint filed by the Bhopal survivors against Union Carbide Corporation and Warren Anderson, Sajida Bano et al v. Union Carbide Corporation in the Federal District Court of Southern New York, « Amended Class Action Complaint, » 1999-2000, pp. 48-60.

[3] See B. G. Ramcharan, The Concept and Dimensions of the Right to Life, in The Right to Life in International Law 3 (B.G. Ramcharan ed., 1985) p. 14.

[4] The UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities recognized the link between environmental degradation and the right to life in a recent report entitled « Human Rights and the Environment », final report prepared by Mrs. Fatma Ksentini, Special Rapporteur, UN ESCOR 46th Sess. Agenda Item 4, at UN Doc. No. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1994/9 (1994) [hereinafter Human Rights and the Environment]. The report quoted Professor Gallicki's comment to the Special Rapporteur that « the right to life is the most important among all human rights legally guaranteed and protected...this right, like no other, may be directly and dangerously threatened by detrimental environmental measures. The right to life and the quality of life depend directly on positive or negative environmental conditions. »

[5] Sajida Bano et al v. Union Carbide Corporation, op. cit.

[6] Adapted from Beyond the Chemical Century: Restoring Human Rights and Preserving the Fabric of Life, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: Environmental Health Fund, December, 1999, pp. 8-9.

[7] This is not the agreed upon text of the decision of the Warwick session of the Permanent People's Tribunal but rather this author's version of it. The former text is currently being revised and will be released shortly.

[8] See Ward Morehouse, « Multinational Corporations and Crimes Against Humanity, in Trent Schroyer, ed., A World That Works: Building Blocks for a Just and Sustainable Society, New York: Bootstrap Press, 1997, pp. 49-61. The impact of global corporations on human rights has also been examined in Ward Morehouse and Richard Grossman, Demanding Human Rights to Fight Corporate Power, San Francisco: Transnational Resource Action Center, January, 1999.

[9] United Nations, International Law Commission, Report of the 48th Session, May 6-26, 1996, pp. 93ff.

[10] For a discussion of this possibility and some of the issues in international law it raises, see a recent paper by Professor Francois Rigaux prepared for the Warwick session of the Permanent People's Tribunal on Global Corporations and Human Wrongs (March 2000). Riguax is the former President of the PPT.

Quand les mondes se retrouvent:
voir l' article de Arundhati Roy, auteur née en 1961 au Bengale, paru dans Le Monde du 14-15 octobre 2001, Ben Laden, secret de famille de l'Amérique.

«Est-ce que l'Inde pourrait en profiter, accessoirement, pour exiger l'extradition de l'Américain Warren Anderson ? En tant que PDG d'Union Carbide, il est responsable de la fuite de gaz qui s'est produite à Bhopal en 1984, causant la mort de 16 000 personnes. Nous avons rassemblé les preuves nécessaires. Elles sont toutes versées au dossier. Vous pourriez nous le livrer, s'il vous plaît ? Merci.»