Transitional Justice and Corporate Accountability from Below
Deploying Archimedes' Lever

Examines when, where, why, and how corporate accountability for past human rights violations in armed conflicts and authoritarian regimes is possible.

Leigh A. Payne (Author), Gabriel Pereira (Author), Laura Bernal-Bermúdez (Author)

9781108474139, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 April 2020

388 pages, 20 b/w illus.
23.4 x 15.9 x 2.4 cm, 0.67 kg

Bruno Tesch was tried and executed for his company's Zyklon B gas used in Nazi Germany's extermination camps. This book examines this trial and the more than 300 other economic actors who faced prosecution for the Holocaust's crimes against humanity. It further tracks and analyses similar transitional justice mechanisms for holding economic actors accountable for human rights violations in dictatorships and armed conflict: international, foreign, and domestic trials and truth commissions from the 1970s to the present in every region of the world. This book probes what these accountability efforts are, why they take place, and when, where, and how they unfold. Analysis of the authors' original database leads them to conclude that 'corporate accountability from below' is underway, particularly in Latin America. A kind of Archimedes' lever places the right tools in weak local actors' hands to lift weighty international human rights claims, overcoming the near absence of international pressure and the powerful veto power of business.

1. Corporate accountability from below
Part I. Obstacles to Corporate Accountability: 2. International pressure for corporate accountability
3. The corporate veto
Part II. Accountability from Below: 4. Truth-telling from below
5. Justice from below
6. The impact of accountability from below
Appendices
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Criminal justice law [LNFB], International human rights law [LBBR], International law [LB], Human rights [JPVH]