Fifteen years after the execution of Nigerian human rights campaigners including Ken Saro-Wiwa, the families have settled with Shell Oil for $19.5 million.

The families of those killed maintain that Shell was complicit in the punishment metered out to the campaigners by the government. They brought their legal action under the Alient Tort Claims Act.

In agreeing to the settlement Shell admits no wrongdoing, instead maintaining that the settlement is being made to aid the "process of reconciliation".

According to the Financial Times report. $5 million of the award will go into a trust fund to aid the people of the Ogoniland region of the Niger Delta, an area that has suffered the full brunt of Nigeria's "resource curse".

The plaintiff's lawyers commented that this settlement represented another building block in establishing the liability of multinational corporations for human rights abuses committed abroad.

While a settlement does little to establish a principle, perhaps the ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York last week will at least make one step in the process easier next time: it held that Shell's Nigerian subsidiary - Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria - has sufficient US connections to be tried in a US court.