Corporate Accountability for Human Rights Violations in Countries in Transition

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© Photograph by Brittany Kaiser

Yesterday I had the pleasure to give a talk at the 9 Bedford Row International Conference on “Human Rights in Post-Revolution States” on board HMS President, the beautiful World War I warship docked on the Thames. My talk was on “Corporate Accountability for Human Rights Violations in Countries in Transition”.

The area of corporate accountability and transitional justice is relatively under explored. As far as I know there is only one book tackling it head on, “Corporate Accountability in the Context of Transitional Justice” edited by my colleague Professor Sabine Michalowski from Essex.

To make my talk more lively, I chose to present a selection of cases, or situations, so as to highlight the type of issues that are likely to arise when trying to hold corporations, or business people, accountable for human rights violations in countries that have transitioned from conflict to peace, or from authoritarian rule to democracy. I focused on the following cases:

1. Post World War II trials against industrialists and bankers in US zone of occupation in Germany;  2. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s findings on business (see previous post here); 3. The Apartheid cases before US federal courts (see previous post here); 4. The Van Anraat case in the Netherlands; and 5. The ongoing Amesys and Qosmos cases in France.

All of these cases bring to the fore the following question, which is fundamental to the business and human rights field: where to draw the line between making profit by doing business with a criminal regime, and being criminally or civilly liable?  There is much uncertainty around this and unfortunately these cases provide no definite answers. In this context, I am expecting a lot from the Amesys and Qosmos cases which I hope to be able to review on this blog if/when trials are held in the future.