Righting corporate wrongs? Extractivism, corporate impunity and strategic use of law (original) (raw)
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It is widely accepted that voluntary corporate responsibility for human rights is a means of continuing 'business-as-usual'. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been denounced as 'whitewash', with little effect in practice. I claim here that voluntary CSR is far worse than 'whitewash': it actively bolsters corporate impunity by rendering the violence of development illegible and equating resistance with irrationality or subversion. It thrives upon the state of exception that provides the permissive context of human rights violations. I make this argument by returning to the birthplace of corporate responsibility for human rights: BP's Colombian oilfields, combining ethnographic research with trenchant critique of the colonial myths informing mainstream discussion of business and human rights. The UN has responded to the potential of voluntary CSR to detract from abuses by emphasising the importance of judicial remedy. What the analysis here reveals is how voluntary measures and provision for judicial remedy may work in opposite directions. La responsabilidad social corporativa (RSC) ha sido acusada de ser una fachada de limitados efectos en la realidad. En este artículo, aduzco que la RSC es peor aún: refuerza activamente la impunidad empresarial, ya que rinde ininteligible la violencia del desarrollo y tilda toda resistencia de irracional o subversiva. Se alimenta de un estado de excepción que proporciona un contexto propicio a las violaciones de DDHH. Regreso al origen de la responsabilidad corporativa respecto a los DDHH: los campos petrolíferos colombianos de BP, para combinar la investigación etnográfica con una crítica incisiva de la mitología colonial que da forma al debate sobre empresas y DDHH. La ONU ha reconocido que la RSC voluntaria tiene el potencial de ocultar los abusos, subrayando la importancia del recurso judicial cuando las medidas voluntarias no alcancen. No obstante, este artículo subraya que las medidas voluntarias y jurídicas pueden servir distintos fines.
Human Rights; State and Corporate Responsibility in the Extractive Sector.pdf
The emerging extractive industries and associated developments have resulted in numerous human rights concerns in host communities, including loss of land and evictions, without compensation and/or relocation; lack of timely and efficient information to enable communities to protect, negotiate and participate in decisions about land ownership, use and management; and extractive industry activity impact on the environment and subsequent health risks. While the human rights issues are almost similar in various part of the country and Africa, various governments and corporations have responded differently overtime. In 2011 though, the "Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights which were developed by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises were published Implementing the United Nations ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ Framework". This article synthesizes the duty of the state to promote, protect and monitor human rights abuse by local and multinational companies involved in the extractive industry, the responsibilities of the companies to comply with domestic laws and respect human rights, and the need for the state and private companies to mitigate the violations and provide appropriate remedies in cases of breach.
RESPONSIBILITY OF OIL AND GAS (O&G) COMPANIES TO PROTECT HUMAN RIGHTS: THE CASE OF SHELL
IJASS, 2019
The role that companies play in domestic and international economies is fundamental and over the last few decades the impact of business on human rights has become increasingly visible. Their impact on human rights is an important discourse as they have the potential to make a direct and enduring impact on people‘s lives. This research uses a case study methodology on an O&G company, Shell to examine its responsibilities and roles in respecting human rights from the theoretical and practical aspect. Assessment of Shell‘s responsibilities is based on the operation of the company and its impacts on the following three aspects: environment; indigenous peoples; and labor. It is important to focus on these three aspects because they impacted most by the operations of the O&G companies. This study is divided into two parts; i) Shell‘s responsibilities to protect human rights from the theoretical perspective in which the published data such as annual report and business guidelines are examine critically; ii) whether Shell has discharged its duties according to what they have declared in their business guidelines. This part examines cases of infringement of human rights involving Shell. This article concludes with recommendations on how O&G companies can respect human rights despite of their hazardous activities to environment, indigenous peoples and labor.
Enterprise & Society
This article uses Statoil (Equinor since 2018) as a prism to explore some key features and concerns of Western oil companies’ evolving human rights awareness from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s. This period saw the first human rights lawsuits brought against oil companies and a gradual change in their human rights awareness. The article uses insights from the business history literature and new archival material from the oil industry to explain why business ethicists and legal scholars are wrong to argue that the relationship between business and social responsibility, on the one hand, and business and human rights, on the other, are inherently problematic and profoundly disparate due to their divergent historical origins. In so doing, the article offers a historical take on the so-called debate between business human rights (BHR) and corporate social responsibility (CSR), and it repudiates the argument that a so-called minimal understanding of human rights has hindered business f...
Following the adoption of the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (Guiding Principles) in 2011, states have increasingly engaged with the need to protect against and remedy corporate human rights abuses. This can be seen in the proliferation of National Action Plans (NAPs) on business and human rights (BHR). Many countries through the Americas have begun drafting BHR NAPs, and engaging in other activities to promote corporate accountability and social responsibility. As the normalization of BHR standards continues in the region, it is important for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to take a lead role in setting regional standards for the state responsibility to protect against and remedy corporate human rights abuse. This paper illustrates, through a discussion of the IACHR’s mandate and functions, along with an analysis of the Commission’s work in the extractive sector that the IACHR is both capable of and obliged to engage with the Guiding Principles.
The Rule of Law, Development and Democracy in Latin America, 2024
This chapter examines how the IAHRS has navigated the tensions between the protection of local communities, particularly indigenous people, and large-scale extractivism promoted and supported by governments. It explores the transnational dimensions affecting the governability for development by examining the IAHRS’s engagement with conflicts arising from tensions and trade-offs generated by development projects affecting indigenous and local interests and rights. It is divided into three main parts. The first part provides a contextual overview of extractivist trends in Latin America with the aim to identify the main drivers of extractivism in the region and how they affect local communities, including indigenous people. The second part discusses how the IAHRS has engaged with the human rights implications of extractivism in Latin America, with specific focus on the development of what we term a tripartite regulatory framework emphasising the obligations of states to ensure the effective participation of affected communities; to elaborate a prior and independent environmental and social impact assessment; and to ensure the sharing of reasonable benefits with affected communities. The third part develops a tentative assessment of the effectiveness of the IAHRS in its engagement with the human rights implications of extractivism.
J. Rochlin (ed). Human Security and Canadian Investments in the Oil Sector in Colombia. London: Routledge Advances in International Security., 2015
From a human rights perspective, this chapter analyzes the struggle between workers, communities, and Pacific Rubiales Energy Corporation at the Campo Rubiales oil field in Meta, Colombia. Drawing on the said case, the chapter critically assesses the limits of human rights law and corporate social responsibility instruments to address labor and human rights conflicts in extractive landscapes.
Business and Human Rights: Policy, Practice, and Outcomes in the Oil and Gas Industry
2017
Multinational enterprises are aware of their responsibility to protect human rights now more than ever, but severe human rights violations, including physical integrity abuses (e.g., death, torture, disappearances), continue unabated. To explore this puzzle, we engage theoretically with the means-ends decoupling literature to examine if and when oil and gas firms' policies and practices prevent severe human rights abuse. Using an original dataset, we identify two pathways to mitigate means-ends decoupling: (a) while human rights policies alone do not reduce human rights abuses, firms with a high-quality human rights policy over the long-term reduce severe human rights abuses; (b) firms that combine preparedness-which we define as a firm's capabilities, practices, and engagement-with a long-term human rights policy also reduce the likelihood of human rights abuses. Preparedness, we argue, can lead to reinforcement dynamics between long-term policy efforts and additional capabilities that provide a more holistic understanding of firm behavior.