Human Rights Law Commons^™

Incentivizing Sustainability In American Enterprise: Lessons From Finnish Model, Vasa T. Dunham

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

The disparate climate performances of Finland and the United States, two of the wealthiest countries in the world, bring to light the question of how corporate responsibility has been inspired in each jurisdiction. Having established the urgency of the climate crisis and the importance of corporate behavior in optimizing a given country’s approach to protection of the global environment, an examination of each nation’s legal frameworks may shed light on features of the corporate regime that are effective in advancing sustainability goals and those that are not.22 Part I of this paper establishes a comparative framework by providing background on …

Reflections On The Role Of The Panel, Charles Di Leva

Perspectives

Over the past thirty years, the World Bank and the Inspection Panel have had a supportive relationship regarding the principle of accountability, particularly as applied to the field of development finance operations and the role and responsibility of the Bank as a multilateral public sector financial institution. This relationship has been apparent in at least three key aspects: i) following the Bank’s lead, many development institutions around the globe have taken steps to improve their own accountability and developed independent accountability mechanisms (IAMs) modeled on the Inspection Panel; ii) the Bank and other development institutions have been supporting the development …

The Critical Contribution Of Independent Accountability Mechanisms (Iams) To The Global Governance Paradigm, Owen Mcintyre

Perspectives

For several decades now, the environmental and social safeguard policies adopted by international financial institutions (IFIs), along with the related accountability frameworks provided by the independent accountability mechanisms (IAMs) established by each, have been at the very forefront of a global movement to extend good environmental and social governance values to the practice of international development finance. The complex of substantive and procedural standards of institutional conduct required under multilateral development bank (MDB) safeguard policies in respect of the assessment and implementation of bank-funded development projects or activities exemplifies the phenomenon of so-called “transnational” or “global” law - the rich …

Rethinking 'What Counts' As Accountability, Jonathan Fox

Perspectives

The current accountability impasse suggests it may be time to rethink core concepts, as well as the field’s underlying theories of change. The idea of accountability is malleable, ambiguous — and contested. This fuzziness poses challenges for both theory and practice – how do we know what strategies bolster accountability – or whether accountability produces its expected effects? This think piece recognizes the challenge of defining ‘what counts’ as accountability, unpacks a longstanding theory of change - that sunshine is the best disinfectant - and considers some information-based reform initiatives to identify missing links in the causal chain between transparency …

Ending Violence In Development Finance Actions To Affirmatively Prevent And Stop Reprisals Against Rights Defenders, Gregory Berry

Perspectives

This Essay makes a case for stronger enforcement and implementation of zero-tolerance policies on reprisals within Development Finance Institutions. It argues that for DFIs to inculcate any hopeful vision of a just and inclusive transition to a sustainable future, they must begin by affirmatively cutting at the roots of reprisals. The essay particularly emphasizes two essential changes. First, Independent Accountability and Audit Mechanisms must be empowered to protect the safety of defenders by self-initiating investigations where there are credible concerns of reprisals, and by accepting anonymously submitted complaints. Second, DFIs must evolve to grow teeth for enforcing measures against retaliatory …

Nestlé V. Doe: A Death Knell To Corporate Human Rights Accountability?, Phillip Ayers

Seattle University Law Review

The Supreme Court in Nestlé v. Doe held that foreign plaintiffs who claimed to be victims of overseas tortious conduct by corporate defendants had no jurisdiction to sue in federal courts using the Alien Tort Statute. This Comment looks at the history of the Alien Tort Statute, from its inspiration, long dormancy, and recent reinvigoration beginning in the 1980s. The Comment then explores the background of Nestlé and its issues with child slavery in its cocoa supply chain. From there, the Comment analyzes the Nestlé v. Doe decision, and posits an alternative outcome. Finally, this Comment looks for a new …

Thirty Years Of Community-Centered Accountability In International Development Key Developments At The World Bank Inspection Panel, Dilek Barlas

Perspectives

Through the lens of important cases, this essay reflects on major developments that occurred at the Panel during the tenure of the author as the Executive Secretary of the World Bank Inspection Panel and shows how the Panel has evolved to improve accessibility, has influenced overall development policies, and has become a catalyst for institutional change. The essay observes that the Panel’s success has largely been due to its structural and operational independence, reporting as it does directly to the Bank’s Board of Executive Directors. However, there are challenges facing the Panel on certain issues, including most importantly its independence, …

Reparations, Or Hush Money?, Christina Glekas

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Global Impunity: How Police Laws & Policies In The World's Wealthiest Countries Fail International Human Rights Standards, Claudia Flores, Brian Citro, Nino Guruli, Mariana Olaizola Rosenblat, Chelsea Kehrer, Hannah Abrahams

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Transparency For Whom? Grounding Land Investment Transparency In The Needs Of Local Actors, Sam Szoke-Burke

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Transparency is often seen as a means of improving governance and accountability of investment, but its potential to do so is hindered by vague definitions and failures to focus on the needs of key local actors.

In this new report focusing on agribusiness, forestry, and renewable energy projects (“land investments”), CCSI grounds transparency in the needs of project-affected communities and other local actors. Transparency efforts that seek to inform and empower communities can also help governments, companies, and other actors to more effectively manage operational risk linked to social conflict.

Troublingly, the report finds that:

• Disclosures around land investments continue …

Lawyering Peace: Infusing Accountability Into The Peace Negotiations Process, Paul Williams

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

On August 28, 2019, Dr. Paul R. Williams delivered the Bruce J. Klatsky Endowed Lecture on Human Rights at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. This article, based on his lecture, examines how justice has repeatedly found a foothold in peace processes, and how the international community can continue to work towards embedding accountability into peace processes to achieve durable peace. This article traces the arc of accountability in peace processes, from an era of impunity and a period of stepping stones moments, to today’s uncertain moment for post-conflict accountability and justice mechanisms. The author argues that comprehensive transitional …

It's Complicated: The Challenge Of Prosecuting Tncs For Criminal Activity Under International Law, Jena Martin

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This essay aims to tackle an increasingly thorny and relevant issue: what do you do if a Transnational Corporation (TNC) commits a crime? The question raises a number of challenges, both philosophically and practically. First, what does it mean to prosecute an organization? Although there are some limited examples (the United States’ prosecution of accounting firm Arthur Andersen being among the most note-worthy), we have relatively little precedence regarding what this would entail; how exactly do you put a corporation on trial? Second, practically speaking, where do you hold the trial? This challenge is magnified by the fact that, by …

The Settlement Of Investment Disputes: A Discussion Of Democratic Accountability And The Public Interest, Lise Johnson, Brooke Guven

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

In this briefing note, CCSI considers the threats to principles of good governance, including government accountability, respect for the rule of law, transparency, and respect for citizens’ rights and interests under domestic law and international human rights norms, that are posed by the settlement of treaty-based investor-state disputes. The authors also consider the exacerbated threats posed by the settlement of disputes that include government counterclaims, and highlight the need for the ISDS reform agenda to include a focus on these issues.

Freedom Of Information Beyond The Freedom Of Information Act, David Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) allows any person to request any agency record for any reason. This model has been copied worldwide and celebrated as a structural necessity in a real democracy. Yet in practice, this Article argues, FOIA embodies a distinctively “reactionary” form of transparency. FOIA is reactionary in a straightforward, procedural sense in that disclosure responds to ad hoc demands for information. Partly because of this very feature, FOIA can also be seen as reactionary in a more substantive, political sense insofar as it saps regulatory capacity; distributes government goods in an inegalitarian fashion; and contributes …

Chemical Weapons And Other Atrocities: Contrasting Responses To The Syrian Crisis, Tim Mccormack

International Law Studies

Why has the use of chemical weapons in Syria engendered such a substantive multilateral response in stark contrast to almost every other egregious international law violation perpetrated against the civilian population? Various theories have been offered but the explanation has little to do with humanitarian concerns for Syrian victims and is more readily explicable by unusual (in the Syrian context) alignment of U.S. and Russian national interests. Bashar al-Assad was convinced to accede to the Chemical Weapons Convention, to surrender his stockpiles of chemical weapons and to co-operate with international investigators deployed under UN Security Council auspices amid a cacophony …

Mapping War Crimes In Syria, Beth Van Schaak

International Law Studies

This article maps the range of war crimes being committed in Syria with reference to the applicable treaty and customary international law and prospects for prosecution. It begins by presenting the international legal framework employed to determine when an armed conflict began in Syria, how this conflict is classified under international law and which multilateral treaties and customary rules are operative. This framework underlies the determination of which war crimes can be prosecuted, which tribunals might have jurisdiction and which perpetrators may be made subject to indictment. The article next focuses on some open legal and factual issues around certain …

The Role Of The State, Multinational Oil Companies, International Law & The International Community: Intersection Of Human Rights & Environmental Degradation Climate Change In The 21st Century Caused By Traditional Extractive Practices, The Amazon Rainforest, Indigenous People And Universal Jurisdiction To Resolve The Accountability Issue, Marcela Cabrera Luna

Master's Theses

Local, national and international conventions that protect indigenous sovereignty and their territories, where many of the resources are extracted from by multinational corporations (MNCs) particularly oil, the number one commodity of the world and cause of climate change, continue to be jeopardized because of the lack of a clear international legal framework that can protect them and potentially hold multinationals accountable for their actions. These practices are causing not only environmental issues to the indigenous and surrounding communities, but climate change is in fact, the real human rights issue of the 21^st century and it affects everyone. By using …

After Atrocity: Optimizing Un Action Toward Accountability For Human Rights Abuses, Steven R. Ratner

Michigan Journal of International Law

It is a great honor for me to be here to deliver the John Humphrey Lecture. Humphrey led one of those lives within the UN that shaped what the organization has become today—as one of the first generation of UN civil servants, he was to human rights what Ralph Bunche was to peacekeeping, or Brian Urquhart to UN mediation. To read his diaries, so beautifully edited by John Hobbins, is to see a world that has in many ways vanished, a nearly entirely male club, mostly of Westerners, that hammered out new treaties and mechanisms over fine wine and cigars …

Las Madres De Plaza De Mayo, Then And Now: A Comparative Analysis Of Its Fractured Factions And Lasting Sybolism In Buenos Aires, Argentina, Sondra Anton

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

I conducted research on three different factions of the original Madres de Plaza de Mayo cause in Buenos Aires, Argentina: Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo, Madres de Plaza de Mayo Línea Fundadora, and Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo. Through interviews and archival research, I have completed a comparison of the three groups. I have concluded that although their original cause of demanding the whereabouts of their disappeared children united them, they are now deeply fragmented among one another due to their differing opinions of how to achieve justice in post-Dirty War Argentina. Furthermore, it is interesting to note the …

Why The Extractive Industry Should Support Mandatory Transparency: A Shared Value Approach, Julien Topal, Perrine Toledano

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

The Transparency Amendment, included in the Dodd‐Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, can be an important tool in curtailing the resource curse that so heavily burdens resource‐rich developing countries by shedding light on opaque payments between the extractive sector and host countries. From the get‐go, however, extractive industry companies have fiercely opposed the new mandatory disclosure requirements as set out in this regulation. The corporate opposition is for the largest part motivated by the fear of a competitive disadvantage that derives from the fact that the amendment is housed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and thus …

Enunciating Genocide: Crime, Rights And The Impact Of Judicial Intervention, Mark Findlay

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

As a consequence of recent decisions from the ICJ and the ICTR, it is clear that genocide can be pursued through the international courts both in terms of criminal liability and also rights/responsibility legal paradigms. This article suggests that this duality in possible contexts and processes of judicial determination, while being procedurally problematic, is in keeping with the human rights direction of international criminal justice. In addition, by opening the legal consideration of genocide to questions of individual liability as well as state-sponsored rights abuse, judges are now able to consider the more realistic complexity of genocide atrocity and thereby …

Tribal Rights, Human Rights, Kristen A. Carpenter, Angela R. Riley

Publications

No abstract provided.

Impunity Writ Large: A Study Of Crimes Committed During Anti-Veerappan Operations, Saumya Uma

Dr. Saumya Uma

Integrating Victims' Rights In The Indian Legal Framework, Saumya Uma

Dr. Saumya Uma

Accountability And The Sri Lankan Civil War, Steven R. Ratner

Articles

Sri Lanka's civil war came to a bloody end in May 2009, with the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) by Sri Lanka's armed forces on a small strip of land in the island's northeast. The conflict, the product of long-standing tensions between Sri Lanka's majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils over the latter's rights and place in society, had begun in the mid-1980s and ebbed and flowed for some twenty-five years, leading to seventy to eighty thousand deaths on both sides. Government repression of Tamil aspirations was matched with ruthless LTTE tactics, including suicide bombings of civilian …

The Communal Violence Bill: Countering Impunity, Seeking Accountability, Saumya Uma

Dr. Saumya Uma

'Accountability' As 'Legitimacy': Global Governance, Global Civil Society And The United Nations, Kenneth Anderson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This essay is a contribution to a symposium on international NGO accountability. It distinguishes between "internal" accountability for NGOs (fiduciary standards, fiscal and internal governance controls, etc.) and "external" accountability (the legitimacy with which they act in the international world, and the legitimacy which they confer upon others, and why). The essay focuses upon the latter, external accountability, and argues that the transformation of international NGOs into "global civil society" signaled an ideological move with regards to legitimacy in the global community, one which asserted claims of "representativeness" and not merely interest or expertise. The essay criticizes this legitimacy move, …

Individual Accountability For Human Rights Abuses: Historical And Legal Underpinnings, Steven R. Ratner, Jason S. Abrams, James L. Bischoff

Book Chapters

The international legal community is beset today with talk of accountability. Governments, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, and scholars speak of the need to hold individuals responsible for official acts that violate the most cherished of international human rights. Some study the nature of various infractions with an eye toward codification; others seek to create or engage mechanisms for trying or otherwise punishing individuals. Their common mission is based on a shared understanding that international law has a role to play not only in setting standards for governments, non-state actors, and their agents, but in prescribing the consequences of a failure …

Enhancing Community Accountability Of The Security Council Through Pluralistic Structure: The Case Of The 1267 Committee, Machiko Kanetake

Machiko Kanetake

No abstract provided.

Codes, Lawsuits Or International Law: How Should The Multinational Corporation Be Regulated With Respect To Human Rights?, Nancy L. Mensch

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.