Litigation FundingPractical Aspects

2021 ◽  
pp. 320-340
Author(s):  
Susan Dunn ◽  
Felix Curtis
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Legal Representation ◽  
Major Barrier ◽  
Human Rights Abuses

The absence of funding for legal representation is a major barrier to justice for victims seeking to hold corporations to account for human rights abuses. Litigation funders, which primarily invest in commercial litigation, are increasingly interested in funding large-scale multinational litigation. However, the level of their interest is a function of the magnitude of the potential return on the funder’s investment, the prospects of success and recoverability of damages, the legitimacy of the funding arrangements, and the funder’s confidence in the legal system of the country in question, as well as the magnitude of any adverse costs liability for which the funder might be liable. Susan Dunn and Felix Curtis outline the basic principles of litigation funding (where permitted); how it works; the considerations a funder will make to evaluate the viability of an investment in a multinational human rights or environmental case; and important variations in litigation funding rules in different countries.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Aiden Warren ◽  
Damian Grenfell
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
State Security ◽  
Timor Leste ◽  
External Powers ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Dominate Discourse

The need to fundamentally rethink interventions is before us. Driven by a combination of pressing humanitarian need as well as conceptual and theoretical dilemmas that limit the value of analysis, it is evident we are seemingly at the crossroads. The crises in Syria and Iraq – the human rights abuses, the destruction of cities and the attenuating flows of refugees into Europe – have only been enough to garner specific military action from external powers in ways closely aligned to national interests. There is the sense that despite being decades on from the end of the Cold War and notwithstanding the varying kinds of interventions in the name of humanitarian ends that have taken place, we have come full circle. For all their challenges and faults, at the end of the twentieth century Kosovo and Timor-Leste suggested that there was enough benefit gained by interventions that they had a future in global politics. The post-9/11 military invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan have, however, come to dominate discourse as wars fought overwhelmingly for state security rather than humanitarian ends (even though the latter are used instrumentally as a justification at times). Moreover, as events in Syria have unfolded, it has become even harder to discern who would be assisted, and to what end, by a large-scale intervention like those that occurred across the 1990s. The widening of Syria’s civil war into a regional one, and the toll on civilians (approximately 260,000 at time of publication), reflects elements that are described in ‘new wars’ analysis, and yet are overlain with shifting forms of globalised warfare, intersections with terrorism, while reaffirming what appears to be more classical superpower rivalries (though now it is between different versions of empire and capitalism). It is such a riven mess that it is quite possible that the only ‘end game’ will come in the form of general annihilation....

Migration will shape Eritrea's foreign relations

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
The Eu

Significance Large-scale emigrations of Eritreans factor into Asmara's foreign relations. Eritrean migration is more than a humanitarian concern; it is shaping relationships with the EU and neighbouring states. Impacts Anti-migration funding may strengthen Eritrean-Sudanese relations but increase tensions with Ethiopia. Additional reports of human rights abuses could deter European support, but immigration concerns may take precedence. Ethiopia's election to the UN Security Council will restrict any progress Asmara hopes to make within the UN.

Nigerian military setbacks could mount as attacks rise

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Military Officers ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Reform Agenda ◽  
Violence Against Civilians ◽  
Senior Officers

Significance The resurgence of the jihadist group comes at a time when the Nigerian military’s public reputation and morale have been damaged by unexplained personnel changes and allegations of corruption and violence against civilians. While rumours of a coup plot by disgruntled officers have proven unfounded, promised military reforms by President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration have not materialised, while several senior officers implicated in human rights abuses remain in office. Impacts Large-scale redeployments of senior military officers may be disruptive to ground operations. The purchase of US Super Tucano jets will forestall spending in more operationally useful areas, including equipment for frontline troops. Entrenched resistance to military oversight will stifle the government’s broader reform agenda.

Remarks by Beth Stephens

2019 ◽  
Vol 113 ◽  
pp. 166-167
Author(s):  
Beth Stephens
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Supreme Court Decisions ◽  
Corporate Interests ◽  
Local Courts ◽  
Host Government

Mechanisms to hold corporations liable for human rights abuses are usually grossly inadequate. All too often, local remedies are not available because the host government and legal system are inadequate or captured by corporate interests. The subsidiary directly responsible for the abuses may not have the funds to provide an adequate remedy, and the parent corporation may not be subject to the jurisdiction of local courts. As a result, victims and survivors of abuses have attempted to follow corporate actors to their home states, through human rights litigation in U.S. and European courts. Although such litigation flourished in U.S. courts for two decades, recent Supreme Court decisions have slashed the number of U.S. human rights cases.

Reconciliation for Realists

1999 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 81-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Dwyer
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Legal System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Core Concept ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Second Best ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Large Numbers

Reconciliation is being urged upon people who have been bitter and murderous enemies, upon victims and perpetrators of terrible human rights abuses, and upon groups of individuals whose very self-conceptions have been structured in terms of historical and often state-sanctioned relations of dominance and submission. The rhetoric of reconciliation is particularly common in situations where traditional judicial responses to past wrongdoing are unavailable because of corruption in the legal system, staggeringly large numbers of offenders, or anxiety about the political consequences of trials and punishment.But what is reconciliation? How is reconciliation to be achieved? And under what conditions should it be sought? The notable lack of answers to these questions prompts the worry that talk of reconciliation is merely a ruse to disguise the fact that a “purer” type of justice cannot be realized–that, in being asked to focus on reconciliation rather than on punishment, victims of past wrongdoing are having to settle for the morally second best. By mining our pretheoretical understandings of reconciliation, the essay arrives at a core concept of reconciliation as narrative incorporation that at the same time suggests a way in which reconciliation might be pursued and grounds a response to moral qualms provoked by the use of an unanalyzed conception of reconciliation.

The Problem of Human Rights

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilie M. Hafner-Burton
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Legal System ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
The People ◽  
International Human

This book examines whether more international legal instruments and procedures would be helpful while probing the actions that states can take in tandem to the large and increasingly elaborate international human rights legal system. It combines research in anthropology, criminology, economics, history, law, political science, psychology, and sociology with practical insight from the people in the field who are engaged in human rights promotion. Its goal is to develop a strategy for stewardship that could help make human rights more of a reality. Part I of the book considers what is known about why people (notably leaders of governments and their envoys) commit human rights abuses. Part II deals with the international human rights legal system that has emerged over the last six decades. Part III explores what governments themselves are doing to advance human rights abroad.

Tracking Down the Missing Financial Link in Transitional Justice

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-92
Author(s):  
Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Causal Link ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Economic Considerations ◽  
Choice Approach

This article argues that lenders providing financial assistance to authoritarian regimes should be held responsible for complicity if they knew or should have known that they would facilitate human rights abuses. Discussing the lenders’ role in a transitional justice context leads to a broadening of legal and institutional tools to channel this responsibility. This article starts by critically assessing the micro criteria traditionally used to understand the causal link between finance and human rights abuses, suggesting that a macro (i.e. holistic, interdisciplinary and casuistic) approach considering structures, processes and dynamics of sovereign financing should be applied when interpreting this link. It also explains how that traditional view is being challenged. A rational choice approach is taken to explain the most salient financial features of large-scale campaigns of gross human rights violations in order to understand the real relevance of funds in contexts of criminal regimes. The legal bases of responsibility for complicity are then discussed, separately presenting the arguments applied to private, multilateral and bilateral lenders. It also outlines how the missing financial link could be integrated into the domain of transitional justice, presenting, elaborating and assessing enforceability of concrete mechanisms to channel financial complicity in order to attain transitional goals. Finally, concluding remarks and challenges on the relationship between financial complicity and transitional justice are presented; and policy and economic considerations are made to better understand the real implications that incorporating the financial dimension into the transitional justice universe could have for a country.

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