Public Eye
Over the years, Public Eye (formerly Berne Declaration), has consistently focused on the commodities sector. We include here a few of their reports.
Commodities: Switzerland’s most dangerous business, 2012. This book is one of the organisation’s earliest publications on the Swiss commodity sector with insights into the operations of the sector, its players and the impacts on local communities where the commodities are produced.
Agricultural commodity traders in Switzerland: Benefitting from misery, 2019. This report focuses on agricultural commodity trading and the role of Swiss-based traders which in some cases also involves controlling the production and processing stages in faraway countries where myriads of human rights issues including, lack of livable wages and income, forced and child labour, poor occupation and health safety records are present.
Five Years of Inaction: Why regulation of commodity trade in Switzerland is long overdue, 2018. This report is a critique to the measures put in place by the Swiss government five years after it released its background report on the commodity sector.
Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO)
Big business, low profile: Shedding light on oil trader’s Vitol operations in Nigeria, 2020. This report focuses on the activities of Vitol, a Swiss company and one of the largest oil traders globally, in Nigeria and the associated human rights, environmental and economic impacts of its operations there.
Brot für alle
Vitol and coal trading: Challenges of human rights due diligence in the supply chain, 2015. This is a case study assessment report of the human rights approach of Vitol, and one of its suppliers, Coal of Africa Limited, against the criteria of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). The responsibility of Vitol regarding the health and climate change impacts of coal is also assessed.
Gold Refining
- Book of Mark Pieth (2019): Gold Laundering: The Dirty Secrets of the Gold Trade
- Society of Threatened (2018): Switzerland – A hub for risky gold?: https://www.gfbv.ch/wp-content/uploads/berichtenglisch_neueversion_mit-links.pdf
- Human Rights Watch (2018): The Hidden Cost of Jewelry: Human Rights in Supply Chains and the Responsibility of Jewelry Companies: https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/jewellery0218_web_0.pdf
Book from Lea Haller (2019): Transithandel: Geld- und Warenströme im globalen Kapitalismus