The human rights lawyers challenging corporate abuse
The human rights lawyers challenging corporate abuse
Conectas (Brazil) describe their legal accountability work
There are lawyers on the ground all over the world, directly helping affected people challenge abuse by companies and obtain justice. Their work is crucial, but often not widely publicised.
Business & Human Rights Resource Centre has built an international directory of lawyers working on cases of human rights abuse involving companies. The directory aims to help victims of abuse find legal assistance in a range of countries – including countries where victims are located and countries where companies are based. It also aims to help lawyers learn about peer lawyers working on business & human rights cases, in their own countries and others.
Whilst building this directory, we took time to interview lawyers to better understand their experience of corporate legal accountability. This is what they had to say:
It would be really helpful to have legislation that clearly spelled out the obligation of business to recognise, uphold and protect human rights of employees and communitites.
Jia Yaw Kiu, Malaysian Bar Association
There are many cases of criminalisation of human rights defenders in Indonesia...We must expose the company's human rights abuses towards comunities.
In most cases of human rights abuses caused by companies, the loss the victims face is huge and cannot be recovered without serious efforts from the government or the business entity...Often, the victim will not have the strength to face a long court process and the prolonged process will cause the business to pay more.
The business community should ensure that their policies are human rights compliant and have an internal accountability test every year so as to ensure a minimum to zero rights violation.
In most cases of human rights abuses caused by companies, the loss the victims face is huge and cannot be recovered without serious efforts from the government or the business entity...Often, the victim will not have the strength to face a long court process and the prolonged process will cause the business to pay more.
Companies’ awareness is increasing, and they are gradually understanding that they cannot expect to abuse the rights of communities and remain unpunished.
Foromo Frédéric Loua, Les Mêmes Droits pour Tous (Guinea)
When a company violates abuses human rights, we demand reparations for the victims for damages rather than getting into lengthy legal procedures, and that is less expensive for them. That is the spirit of the Guiding Principles.
Both the State and companies should comply with the law, judicial rulings and the obligations assumed in the agreements by which they themselves agreed to abide.
Danilo Chammas, lawyer and activist for Justiça nos Trilhos (Justice on the Rails, Brazil)
We are in the middle of a struggle where we hold that corporations have to be held accountable. Meanwhile, the corporate community is trying to immunize themselves from any sort of legal regulations
Wolfgang Kaleck, European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR)
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