Talk:Nevsun Resources Ltd v Araya

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A fact from Nevsun Resources Ltd v Araya appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 2 August 2020 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that according to Nevsun Resources Ltd v Araya, corporations may be liable in Canadian courts if their operations in other countries violate customary international law?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2020/August. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Nevsun Resources Ltd v Araya.

Wikipedia

Did you know nomination[edit]

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Yoninah (talk) 18:06, 26 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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Comment or view
Article history

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... that, according to Nevsun Resources Ltd v Araya, corporations may be liable for violations of international human rights law committed in other countries? A Vancouver-based mining company can be sued in Canada for alleged human rights abuses overseas including allegations of modern slavery, Canada’s supreme court has ruled.
- ALT1:... that, according to Nevsun Resources Ltd v Araya, corporations may be liable in Canadian courts if their subsidiaries in other countries violate customary international law? ... can a private, non-state actor be held liable in Canada for its alleged breaches of international law abroad? According to the majority in Nevsun, the answer is yes.; Nevsun Resources Ltd v Araya, 2020 SCC 5 at para 132

* Reviewed: Milton (electoral district), but I believe I'm exempt per WP:QPQ as I have not yet received a DYK.

Created by AleatoryPonderings (talk). Self-nominated at 03:37, 22 June 2020 (UTC).[reply]

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: None required.

Overall: @AleatoryPonderings: You do not need a QPQ since this is your first nomination, so you can remove that and save it for later (i.e. when you have more than 5 nominations). The copyvio report looked concerning at first, but it's mostly a quote and some phrases that are hard to rephrase. epicgenius (talk) 15:20, 24 June 2020 (UTC) epicgenius (talk) 15:20, 24 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Epicgenius: Thanks! Just struck through the QPQ above. And yes, I checked the copyvio report too and didn't quite know how to address that – phrases like 'act of state doctrine' and 'corporate social responsibility', as well as direct quotes from the judgment, are hard to get around repeating directly. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 15:32, 24 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I came by to promote ALT1, but the article doesn't mention subsidiaries and it would actually benefit from using this word or otherwise explaining how corporations can violate laws in other countries. Yoninah (talk) 08:08, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Yoninah: This edit should take care of some of those concerns? Given its 60 percent stake—which made it a controlling shareholder—Nevsun qualifies as a "parent" and BMSC as a "subsidiary" of Nevsun. I added two articles to back that up. They're both from mining trade publications (which, obviously, were more interested in the decision than others …), so not clearly WP:RS for general claims, but one includes a direct quote from Nevsun describing BMSC as its subsidiary and the other is an interview with a partner at McMillan LLP which repeatedly describes BMSC as Nevsun's subsidiary. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 14:22, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@AleatoryPonderings: sorry, I somehow missed this ping. Thank you for the new cites. I would just like to know if the decision specifically states that corporations can be held liable in Canadian court if their subsidiaries violate international customary law abroad, or if the decision doesn't mention subsidiaries at all. I'm wondering why you didn't add the subsidiaries part to the lead. Yoninah (talk) 17:44, 26 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Yoninah: That's a tricky one. The decision itself (at paragraph 7) uses the word "subsidiary" just once in the relevant sense, describing the mine's operating company as "40 percent owned by the Eritrean National Mining Corporation and, through subsidiaries, 60 percent owned by Nevsun, a publicly-held corporation …". So, in effect, the decision holds that Canadian parent corporations of international subsidiaries can be held liable for the subsidiaries' activities. The source for the claim in the hook, then, comes from the secondary sources I flagged above, not explicit descriptions in the case. If that sounds like OR to you, I understand, and would be happy to withdraw my nom for that reason, or change hook to alt2 below. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 17:59, 26 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

ALT2: ... that, according to Nevsun Resources Ltd v Araya, corporations may be liable in Canadian courts if their operations in other countries violate customary international law?

Let's just do that. Restoring tick for ALT2 per epicgenius' review. Yoninah (talk) 18:05, 26 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]