This Friday I wanted to highlight an amazing project which recently won the 2009 Echoing Green Fellowship. Accountability Counsel is an organization aiming to partner with communities harmed by international finance and development projects in order to hold international institutions and corporations accountable, and develop new accountability systems where none exist.
Communities around the world have been harmed by multinational corporations, which have displaced people and taken their land, dumped toxic chemicals and waste in bodies of water, and threatened those who have dared to challenge such injustices. This is nothing new. However what surprised me most is that no other organization existed to assist communities - that often lack the resources to pursue their cases through the legal system - in seeking justice for the wrongs they have experienced.
Accountability Counsel conducts trainings at the grassroots level regarding accountability tools and helps communities implement these tools, including litigation. The organization helps communities seek redress for the harm they have experienced at the hands of international corporations.
The project is spearheaded by Natalie Bridgeman, an inspiring young attorney who has worked on environmental and human rights issues, with a focus on development accountability. She is a graduate of Cornell University where she was a Udall Scholar, and of UCLA School of Law’s Program in Public Interest Law and Policy where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs. She has work experience with NGOs on advocacy campaigns, as a litigator at a large law firm, and as an accountability consultant.
About her inspiration, she says:
“While there, I traveled to the BioBio River where the indigenous Mapuche were protesting the illegal construction of a large series of hydroelectric dams on the River, which were displacing their villages and inundating their land. I stood a few feet away while the police tear gassed the eighty-year-old Mapuche women who were fighting for their land. I learned that the project was financed by an institution that used US taxpayer money – that my country was funding this injustice. They implored me to help. There was no turning back from development accountability work after that.”
Read more about Natalie’s project here!
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