Corporate Accountability for Gross Human Rights Violations - An Intersectoral Workshop
Thursday, July 7, 2022 3:00 AM to 12:30 PM EDT
17 Quai d’Anjou, Paris 75004
In the past 20 years, mobilizations for corporate accountability for gross human rights violations have proliferated across the globe. NGOs, trade unions, legal experts and social scientists have built transnational coalitions to raise awareness, enforce national and international legislation, boycott, and bring to courts multinational companies and their representatives accused of human rights violations.
This workshop explores how transnational social movements build such strategies in primarily four industrial sectors: spyware and digital technologies; arms, weapons, and military training industries; extractive industries; and the banking and finance sectors.
What are the specificities of these industries in respect to gross violations of human rights? What repertoires of contentious action are used to enforce accountability in these four industrial sectors? In what ways, under what conditions, and to what extent are they effective? What challenges and constraints do they confront? How do various industries, companies, and business associations respond to these campaigns given their various financial and reputational interests and organizational cultures? To what extent, if at all, is transnational activism better suited than national/ local campaigns to deal with corporate complicity in political violence? Are there different approaches to corporate accountability that fragment and even divide social movements and human rights activists according to regional and professional area of activism?
PROGRAMME (Based on local time in Paris)
9:00 - 9:15 | INTRODUCTION
- RALUCA GROSESCU (SNSPA, RO)
- SIMON LUCK (Paris Institute of Advanced Study, FR)
9:15 - 10:45 | SPYWARE, SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM & HUMAN RIGHTS
- JOHN G. DALE (George Mason University, US), Surveillance Capitalism and Corporate Accountability
- KHALID IBRAHIM (Gulf Centre for Human Rights, LB), International mechanisms to put an end to the targeted surveillance of human rights activists
- MARWA FATAFTA (Access Now, DE), MENA Coalition to Combat Digital Surveillance
10:45 - 11:00 | COFFEE BREAK
11:00 - 12:00 | EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRIES, ENVIRONMENT AND MAJOR INTERNATIONAL CRIMES
- JOANNA KYRIAKAKIS (Monash University, AU), Mining Industry and Cultural and Environmental Rights Abuses with a Focus on Australia (online)
- SANDRA COSSART (Sherpa, FR), Sherpa’s Mobilizations for Corporate Accountability in Extractive Industries
12:00 - 13:00 | LUNCH
13:15 - 14:45 | ARMS, WEAPONS, AND MILITARY TRAINING INDUSTRIES
- RUXANDRA IVAN (SNSPA, RO), Private Security Firms and Diluted State Responsibility for Gross Human Rights Violations
- LAURA DUARTE REYES (European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights, DE), Corporate Accountability in Action: Strategic Human Rights Litigation on Arms Trade Exports
- AYMERIC ELLUIN (Amnesty International, FR), Weapons Exports: the Accountability of the Defence Industry and its Implementing
14:45 - 15:00 | COFFEE BREAK
15:00 - 16:00 | BANKING SECTOR: WHAT GUILT, WHAT ACCOUNTABILITY
- JUAN PABLO BOHOSLAVSKI (Universidad Nacional de Río Negro, AR), Why is holding financial accomplices accountable so hard?
- BUSISIWE KAMOLANE (Centre for Applied Legal Studies, ZA), Holding Financiers Accountable for Human Rights Violations
16:00 - 16:15 | COFFEE BREAK
16:15 - 17:30 | DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY
- SOPHIE GROBSON (University of Nanterre, FR), UN Treaty on Business and Human Rights: For Whom and For What?
- RALUCA GROSESCU (SNSPA, RO), Neoliberal, Neo-Marxist, and Decolonial Approaches to Corporate Accountability
- SABINE MICHALOWSKI (University of Essex, UK), Corporate Accountability in Colombia and its International Dimensions
17:30 - 18:30 | ROUNDTABLE
Moderator
- JOHN DALE (George Mason University, US)
Presenters/Participants
- MARIA-ISABEL CUBIDES (Independent Exepert, FR)
- JERNEJ LETNAR ČERNIČ (Graduate School of Government and European Studies, SI)
- HENRY RAMMELT (SNSPA, RO)
18:30 | COCKTAIL