Legal Research

Beijing Olympics: Corporate Sponsors Risk Black Eye

By Michel-Adrien Sheppard

The international NGO Human Rights Watch recently published a report on the upcoming Beijing Summer Olympics that states that the “corporate sponsors of the Olympics risk lasting damage to their brands if they do not live up to their professed standards of corporate social responsibility by speaking out about the deteriorating human rights situation in China.”

The report targets the 12 highest-level corporate benefactors of the Beijing Games, known as the TOP sponsors (”The Olympic Partner”): Atos Origin, Coca-Cola, General Electric (GE), Manulife (parent company of John Hancock), Johnson & Johnson, Kodak, Lenovo, McDonald?s, Omega (Swatch Group), Panasonic (Matsushita), Samsung, and Visa.

Here are a few earlier posts about the Olympic Games on my Library Boy blog:

• International Sports Law Guide (February 17, 2006): “Written by a librarian at Georgetown University, this new International Sports Law guide published on the GlobaLex website looks at key institutions governing international sports and provides information and links to federations governing individual sports at an international level, bodies associated with the Olympic Games and the Court of Arbitration for Sport.”
• New Internet Research Guide for Olympic Studies (April 2, 2008): “Intute, a British university consortium that offers free online service access to evaluated web resources for education and research, has just published a new subject booklet entitled ‘Internet resources for Olympic studies’. The booklet describes resources relating to associations, the history of the Olympic Games, past and future Games, athletes, sports research, event management, and legal issues (arbitration of sports disputes, disability sports, gender equity and doping).”
• China Crackdown on Human Rights Intensifying Before 2008 Olympics (April 7, 2008): “The human rights organization Amnesty International recently published a report documenting the intensifying campaign of repression by Chinese authorities before the opening of the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing later this year.”

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on April 23, 2008 (boomark / email).