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Article

26 Jul 2016

Author:
Get Up! No Business in Abuse, Human Rights Law Centre

Full report: "Association with Abuse: The financial sector’s association with gross human rights abuses of people seeking asylum in Australia"

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Spanish stock exchange-listed company Ferrovial SA...operates the ODCs [overseas detention centre] through its subsidiary Broadspectrum, exposing Ferrovial to complicity in gross human rights abuses and attendant material legal, financial and reputational risk. As of May 2016 around 847 people are being held in Manus Island ODC (in northern Papua New Guinea) and 466 people in Nauru ODC...The ODCs have...been decisively and repeatedly condemned by expert human rights bodies and by the international community...Given the severity of the impacts and the impossibility of meaningful mitigation of the abuses, Ferrovial must cease and remediate abuses within the ODCs, by: a. Immediately releasing all people held in the ODCs to humane conditions in Australia or, with their consent, an equivalent situation with adequate support and services in accordance with UNHCR’s recommendation; and b. Immediately ending all involvement in the ODCs...Ferrovial’s financial backers must take immediate action to end the business relationships that associate them with the gross human rights abuses being  perpetrated at the ODCs...Ferrovial’s activities in providing services is essential to maintaining a system that violates human rights standards and constitutes a breach of the corporate responsibility to respect human rights contained in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.

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