LLM Human Rights and Legal Practice Assessment Answer

What Is Corporate Legal Accountability? An Annotated Bibliographic Essay On The Extent To Which Companies Are Legally Liable For Human Rights Violations.

Corporate legal accountability basically considers the legal responsibilities of various companies for the abuses of human rights. These include litigations as well as legislation. This entire hub offers the latest news, resources, analysis and cases on CLA in order to assist the corporate and advocate impunity for the abuses of human rights. The term corporate accountability generally maintains that businesses must be held responsible for the effect of their actions on the entire society as well as the environment as a whole. It is also considered as a significant concept for the shareholders and the investors concerned with the concept of ethical investing this strategy mainly engaged in choosing the investment that is held on the basis of ethical principles. This paper mainly analyses the liability of the companies regarding the violation of human rights. The paper includes a short introduction. Then the paper discusses regarding the liability of the companies in depth. Lastly, the main findings of the paper have been concluded briefly.

It is believed that the civil liability is a significant increase as a way of assuring the legal accountability when an organization is held complicit in gross abuses of human rights. Civil liability has been found to have an essential impact on the lives and situations of people who have been suffered from abuses of human rights, through offering for proper remedies. Significantly, it can also impact the behavior pattern within a society, increasing the expectations regarding acceptable conduct. It also prevents a repeat of certain conduct. This is held liable by both actors and by the other actors who basically operate in the same spheres or they find themselves in the same situations[1]. Within each and every jurisdiction, the victims of the gross abuse of human rights or their families hold the ability to begin civil claims. Too often the companies have implicated in the abuses of human rights do not experience actual consequences for the failure in order to respect the right of humans. This basically means that where the governmental authorities even are reluctant in order to become engaged in criminal proceedings and hold an interest in safeguarding the certain company or their representatives from liability or safeguarding themselves when it is claimed that the organization was in abuses complicit which has been committed by the state.

Although civil remedies law might not utilize the terminology of the laws of human rights, within each and every jurisdiction it safeguards various interests like dignity, mental and physical integrity, liberty, life as well as property. It has been found that the panel states that harm to several or one of the interests will be considered as the inherent part of the gross abuse of human rights always. Regarding the purposes of the civil liabilities, it is considered irrelevant whether a company whose liability has been sought was the secondary or the primary actor. Civil remedies law mostly does not utilize the term complicit or does not draw any distinctions between the accessories or accomplices as well as principal perpetrators. Generally, all of the actors whose conduct impacts in a lesser or greater manner to harm that has been suffered by another have the ability to experience civil liability potentially. Legal accountability of an organizational entity is to look for the civil remedies law and this might provide the victims with Legal Avenue often to the remedy. This is due to the fact that the civil remedy law can deal with the company's conduct, state authorities and individual always.

Various ways have been identified that businesses are engaged in gross abuses of human rights in practice. Corporate complicity emerged as the primary legal concept in order to assist explain as well as delineate the extent to which businesses must hold the responsibility for the action of third parties like the military, paramilitaries, joint ventures, contractors, security providers and government. The article shows various scenarios where the companies are held responsible for abuses of human rights[2]. The ongoing and recent legal cases have profiled on the Business as well as Human Rights Resource center website offers examples of several manners in which businesses have the ability to become implicated or engaged in gross abuses of human rights. These cases have been found where the companies and the staff and managers of the companies were accused of directly being responsible for the actions mounting to the gross abuses of human rights. Similarly, there were cases where the state authorities and the governments have involved companies to offer technology, services, goods and other services that are then utilized in a repressive or abusive manner.

Along with these, there were cases where the companies have been accused of offering information, financial or logistical assistance, to the abusers of human rights. It has been facilitated, caused, or claimed or they have exacerbated the concept of abuse[3]. The cases frequently rose out of the circumstance where the services of State security have been called in order to help with the resolution of some of the conflicts or disputes surrounding the activities of the business[4]. One more case has been presented where the companies were accused of being complicit in the abuses of human rights by the virtue of having investments in joint ventures or projects or the regimes with poor records of human rights or also with connections to the abusers who are known.

For instance, while doing the Vedanta Case analysis, it has been found that in the month of April 2019, judgment was given in the Supreme Court in the UK within V. Longowe and other companies of UKSC and Vedanta Resources. It is revealed that a statutory duty breach and a negligence claim against the mining company of Zambia has been put forward in front of the English courts considering its operations undergone within Africa. Thousands of villagers coming from Zambia alleged a legal complaint before the court that toxic water pollution from the mine of KCM had damaged their farming and health activities[5]. The question arisen in the court was whether a duty of care had been assumed by Vedanta Resource Plc with regards to KCM mine’s operations. It was concluded by Supreme Court at last that Vedanta Company has declared its individual responsibility assumption for maintaining accurate environmental control standards over various activities concerning its subsidiaries as well as specifically the operations within the mine of KCM.

While various situations have been discussed where corporations have been accused of being the primary perpetrators of actions amounting to the gross abuse of human rights, most of the scenarios which have been litigated or prosecuted to date concern the allegations of the corporate complicit within the gross abuses of human rights that are perpetrated by other people. An argument was raised which states that although the business enterprises might not be the main for the abusers, they must regardless be held responsible legally depending on the way they are being facilitated or assisted in the abuse in material ways.

State complicit in corporate violations of human rights should be considered. Apart from increasing the problem of the responsibility of the direct state for the violations of human rights, those complicit mean that corporate responsibility can be raised in several contexts. An organization can be engaged actively in violating the rights of humans by giving rise to the primary responsibility[6]. The organization can be involved passively also and this means that it does not take any actions for safeguarding the rights of the employees even when it is not the immediate violator itself. The discussion of responsibility can be even stretched to the situations of pervasive violations within which any corporation is much more aware that the violations are happening in the country within which it operates, although they are not related to MNC operations. Apparently, duties of an organization are considered strongest considering the cases of main responsibility. On the other end of the spectrum, degree of the responsibility is lower presumably. In the latter situation, the problem can be considered as one of whether an MNC have the ability to be needed in order to undertake some positive actions in order to improve the situation of human rights in an operational country[7]. Such a contributing aspect is included often within the soft approaches or asserting responsibilities. This basically serves to show that determination of when the responsibilities raise doe not tend to be unambiguous completely. The extension of the responsibilities of human rights to the companies also raises questions regarding legal concepts often. Lack of personality legally has been perceived as an obstacle to providing the responsibilities upon the corporations.

Corporate legal accountability basically considers the legal responsibilities of various companies for the abuses of human rights. These include litigations as well as legislation. Civil liability has been found to have an essential impact on the lives and situations of people who have been suffered from abuses of human rights, through offering proper remedies. An organization can be engaged actively in violating the rights of humans by giving rise to the primary responsibility. The organization can be involved passively also and this means that it does not take any actions for safeguarding the rights of the employees even when it is not the immediate violator itself.

References

Bonfanti A, Business and Human Rights in Europe: International Law Challenges (Routledge 2020)

Engström V, “Who Is Responsible for Corporate Human Rights Violations? - Åbo Akademi” ( https://www.abo.fi/ 2023) accessed April 1, 2023

ICJ, Corporate Complicity & Legal Accountability: Report of the International Commission of Jurists, Expert Legal Panel on Corporate Complicity in International Crimes (International Commission of Jurists 2008)

Mofo , “UK Companies Responsible for Business and Human Rights Violations Overseas” ( Morrison Foerster 2020) accessed April 2, 2023

Shelton D, Remedies in International Human Rights Law (Oxford University Press 2015)

Van der Ploeg L and Vanclay F, “Challenges in Implementing the Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human Rights in the Context of Project-Induced Displacement and Resettlement” (2018) 55 Resources Policy 210

Zerk DJ, “Corporate Liability for Gross Human Rights Abuses - Office of the ...” (2006) accessed April 1, 2023

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