Katherine Redford

1995

Katherine Redford

Earth Rights International

http://www.earthrights.org

Washington D.C., United States

Civil and Human Rights, Environment

The Bold Idea:

Earth rights are those rights that demonstrate the connection between human well-being and a sound environment -- including the right to a healthy environment, the right to speak out and act to protect the environment, and the right to participate in development. Too many people in the world are denied those rights.

In Burma, citizens are unable to participate in decisions about their environment, and resistance often means torture or death. Adding insult to injury, these people are often forced to help build those very development projects that destroy their homelands. They suffer a variety of human rights abuses, including forced labor, rape, torture, murder, and relocation, as a direct consequence of the environmental destruction they never authorized. The government regime is the main reason why human rights and the environment are such cheap currency in Burma.

Earth Rights International (ERI) is one of the only organizations to assemble on-the-ground information about the human rights and environmental situation inside the country. The Burma Project is just one example of the various programs ERI runs. Each project is designed to promote and protect earth rights in different ways: by using the US or international legal system as a tool for change; by training and educating affected peoples so they become their own best advocates; by documenting, writing about, and publicizing abuses; by engaging international institutions in the struggle to censure earth rights abusers; and by strengthening networks and coalitions so that a united front against earth right violations can be provided.

Working as a collection of activists, organizers, and lawyers with expertise in human rights, the environment, and corporate and government accountability, ERI has made some major accomplishments since its founding. Its work has resulted in a landmark lawsuit, Doe v. Unocal Corp, (the first time a US court has granted jurisdiction over a private corporation for human rights abuses committed in a foreign land) and the creation of several schools for future activists in Southeast Asia and in the Amazon.

Biography:

Katharine Redford, Esq., Co-Founder and US Office Director of ERI, is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, where she received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Human Rights and Public Service. She is a member of the Massachusetts State Bar and served as counsel to plaintiffs in ERI's landmark case Doe v. Unocal. Katie received an Echoing Green Fellowship in 1995 to establish ERI, and since that time has split her time between ERI's Thailand and US offices. In addition to working on ERI's litigation and teaching at the EarthRights Schools, Katie currently serves as an adjunct professor of law at both UVA and the Washington College of Law at American University. She has published on various issues associated with human rights and corporate accountability, in addition to co-authoring ERI reports such as In Our Court, Shock and Law, and Total Denial Continues. In 2006, Katie was selected as an Ashoka Global Fellow.