Lawyers in the UK and US recently initiated coordinated legal campaigns against Facebook for its role in facilitating the genocide perpetrated by the Myanmar regime and extremist civilians against the Rohingya people.
Mishcon de Reya Managing Partner James Libson, alongside Jason McCue, Senior Partner at McCue Jury & Partners LLP, the other Firm representing claimants in the UK proceedings, wrote about the case in The Guardian.
In their piece, James and Jason argue that Facebook was greedy, negligent and callous, and insist that courts in the global north have a duty to protect citizens of developing countries from plunder by corporations.
They summarise:
“It is now incumbent on the courts of the global north to provide access to justice for the vulnerable people of the global south. After all, it is within the jurisdictions of such established and hallowed courts that these errant Goliaths hide and are based. Such corporates repeatedly attempt to avoid accountability; indeed Facebook has so far only responded to letters alerting them to this litigation by claiming that the company cannot be held liable in the UK but only in Dublin, where it is provided greater legal protections.
Corporate empires and tech businesses such as Facebook are purposely contrived to tap dance around corporate liability, but justice must eventually win out. A business model that is inherently global is inherently liable globally. It will be fitting for David to bring down Goliath after the mighty and powerful in government have failed so far to do so.”
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