These days, it’s not unusual for law departments to create a global network to tackle corporate legal issues abroad. But bringing together 70 lawyers from three corporations and a law firm to aid a non-profit’s work in a remote part of the world is truly unique and proves that it really is a small world after all.
Legal teams from Accenture, Caterpillar and Merck united with Baker & McKenzie and the Public Interest Law Institute (PILI) to attack the socioeconomic and sexual exploitation of women in Nepal. In 2008, PILI Fellow Sarmila Shrestha, a public interest lawyer for Pro Public, a non-profit based in Kathmandu, brought a case to the Supreme Court of Nepal to fight unjust workplace conditions in “cabin and dance” restaurants, where women and girls as young as 10 years old are forced to smoke, drink and perform sexual services. The court condemned the practices and directed the enactment of legislation to ameliorate the problem.
