Remedy for corporate human rights abuses in transitional justice contexts

Corporations and other business enterprises often operate in countries affected by conflict or repressive regimes and commit human rights violations and crimes under international law, either as the main perpetrator or as accomplices by aiding and abetting government forces. In transitional justice contexts, the trials, truth commissions, and reparations typically included within the set of remedy mechanisms have focused primarily on abuses by state authorities’ or by non-state actors directly connected to the state, such as paramilitary groups or death squads. Innovative uses of transitional justice mechanisms across the world, however, have started to address, even if still only in a marginal way, corporate accountability for human rights abuses and crimes under international law and have attempted to provide redress for victims. This research analyses this development.
This research provides an original contribution to the field on business and human rights and the little-researched link with transitional justice by assessing how remedies for corporate human rights abuses and crimes under international law can be achieved in transitional justice contexts. To answer this question this research first analyses how different mechanisms (judicial processes at the international and domestic level, truthseeking initiatives, and reparations programmes) have dealt, or failed to deal, with remedy for victims of corporate human rights abuses. It then examines their outcomes, the results those processes have achieved and the obstacles they have faced. The research takes a victim-oriented approach by analysing the tools, instruments and institutions available for victims (the bearers of rights) in transitional justice contexts (i.e. in countries emerging from conflict or authoritarian regimes) to remedy violations when those are committed by corporations.