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Terry Collingsworth is the founder and Executive Director of the International Rights Advocates. Before becoming a lawyer, Terry worked for five years as an overhead crane operator in a copper mill in Cleveland, Ohio. This experience introduced him to the importance of trade unions and the need for rigorous protection of worker rights. He went to law school to acquire the skills needed to address the lack of worker protections and basic respect for human rights in the global economy. He has been practicing law in the United States for over 35 years, and for the last 27, has specialized in international human rights litigation. He has worked all over the world, from India and West Africa to most countries in South America, addressing a wide range of human rights issues.
In 1996, he filed John Roe I v. Unocal, the first human rights case filed against a corporation under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). Unocal partnered with the military regime in Burma, which used the forced labor of villagers to construct a gas pipeline. After successfully litigating and clarifying the key ATS issues, the case was settled before trial. He has been involved in most of the subsequent corporate human rights cases filed in U.S. courts.
Terry has recently focussed on cases preventing multinational companies from violating the human rights of children who are forced by poverty and other factors to work in global supply chains. Representative cases are Coubaly et. al v. Nestle et. al, No. 1:21 CV 00386 (eight Malian former enslaved children have sued Nestle, Cargill, Mars, Hershey, Barry Callebaut, Mondelez and Olam under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act [TVPRA] for forced child labor and trafficking in their cocoa supply chains in Cote D’Ivoire); John Doe 1 et al. v. Nestle, SA and Cargill, Case No. CV 05-5133-SVW (six Malian former enslaved children sued Nestle and Cargill under the ATS for using child slaves in their cocoa supply chains in Cote D’Ivoire); and John Doe 1 et. al v. Apple et. al, No. CV 1:19-cv-03737(15 families sued Apple, Tesla, Dell, Microsoft, and Google under the TVPRA for knowingly joining a supply chain for cobalt in the DRC that relies upon forced and trafficked child labor). Terry and his team that litigated John Doe 1 v. Exxon Mobil for 22 years before reaching a favourable settlement in 2023, was awarded the Public Justice Foundation’s Trial Lawyer of the Year Award in 2024. Terry was the original filer of John Doe 1 v. Chiquita Brands, a case against Chiquita for funding a terrorist group in Colombia to provide “security” for its banana plantations, resulting in the murders of thousands of innocent civilians. After a two month trial this summer, a jury found Chiquita liable in the first bellwether trial for $38.3 million.
With Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kailash Satyarthi, Terry founded Rugmark (now Goodweave), an independent monitoring and certification system to prevent child labor in the hand-knotted carpet sector of South Asia. A unique feature of the program is a successful and sustainable rehabilitation and education program for children rescued from slavery during the monitoring process.
Terry attended Duke University School of Law and has taught at numerous law schools all over the world. He enjoys running, hiking, snowboarding, and literature.