The Impact of Business on Society: Exploring CSR Adoption and Alleged Human Rights Abuses by Large Corporations

Author(s):  
Davide Fiaschi ◽  
Elisa Giuliani
2021 ◽  
pp. 530-550
Author(s):  
Janine Natalya Clark

Transitional justice refers to the set of judicial and non-judicial processes that societies may use to deal with legacies of past human rights abuses and atrocities. While the field is rapidly expanding, to date there are almost no systematic analyses of transitional justice within a resilience framework, or vice versa. The purpose of this chapter is to address that gap and to demonstrate why resilience is highly relevant for transitional justice theory and practice. It argues that resilience thinking can enhance the impact of transitional justice on the ground, by contributing to the development of more ecological approaches to dealing with the past that locate individuals within their broader social environments. The chapter also reflects on the conceptual and empirical utility of resilience as a concept that opens up a space for analyzing the wider societal and systemic impact of legal systems more generally.


Subject The impact of repression in Xinjiang on China's relations with Muslim-majority countries. Significance The silence of Muslim-majority countries in the face of human rights abuses in Xinjiang contrasts with their international activism on behalf of Palestine, Kashmir and the Rohingya minority in Myanmar. Impacts Governments in the more repressive Muslim-majority countries, especially in the Middle East, will censor discussion of the Xinjiang issue. Where public pressure forces the governments of Muslim-majority countries to act, responses are unlikely to go beyond rhetoric. Beijing would not hesitate to use limited economic sanctions to punish Muslim-majority countries that criticise its internal policies.


2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 214-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiwon Suh

How could Suharto avoid prosecution for human rights abuses? For a preliminary answer, this paper provides an account of a specific and observable failure: The failure of the Suharto study team, a Komnas-HAM (National Commission of Human Rights) initiative to put the atrocities of the Suharto era on the human rights court track. It begins with prosecutorial approaches toward past abuses and a lack of coordination over transitional justice strategies in Indonesia as the background to Suharto’s non-prosecution. Then, it proceeds to trace the Suharto study team’s life in 2003 until its defeat. The fate of the Suharto team highlights the dilemma of timing between public attention and political capabilities in transitional justice. Five years after Suharto stepped down, legacies from the past prevented progress in the case, while the impact was far from explosive when new commissioners of the Komnas-HAM finally announced the findings of gross violations in 2012.


2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 87-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lotsmart Fonjong

Abstract In this article I argue that the worsening human rights situation of West Africa in the early 1990s was largely the creation of the structural adjustment policies (SAP) of the IMF/World Bank. The austerity measures implemented through SAP plunged the region into hardship, forcing the population to demand better living conditions through public demonstrations and protests. Attempts by the West African states to contain protesters led to further human rights abuses. The implementation of a common liberalization policy across board without taking into account the specificities of each country was counterproductive. In fact, some of the excesses recorded could have been avoided if SAPs had been country specific and human rights-based.


2007 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 955-964 ◽  
Author(s):  
MAX DU PLESSIS

This article considers the work of John Dugard in the field of human rights and international law and the impact thereof on the South African legal landscape. After tracing the importance of Dugard's early work in South Africa in the fields of legal philosophy, human rights, and international law, the article turns to consider the later achievements in Dugard's prestigious career. The author highlights the numerous cases in which Dugard appeared as counsel before the South African courts, and considers the impact that Dugard had on the drafting of the South African Constitution in relation to international law and its use in interpreting the South African Bill of Rights. The final section of the article considers the shameful failure of the South African government to support Dugard in his bid to be appointed as a judge of the International Court of Justice. The author concludes that notwithstanding the fact that the government has not accorded him the recognition he deserves, Dugard's pioneering human rights work continues unabated in his various positions, including in his role as the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights abuses in occupied Palestine.


2001 ◽  
Vol 178 (4) ◽  
pp. 373-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debra Kaminer ◽  
Dan J. Stein ◽  
Irene Mbanga ◽  
Nompumelelo Zungu-Dirwayi

BackgroundThe impact on individual survivors of human rights abuses of testifying before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has not been established.AimsTo examine the degree to which participation in the TRC is related to current psychiatric status and forgiveness among survivors.MethodSurvivors (n=134) who gave public, closed or no testimony to the TRC completed instruments measuring exposure to human rights abuses, exposure to other traumatic events, current psychiatric status and forgiveness attitudes towards the perpetrator(s).ResultsThere was no significant association between TRC participation and current psychiatric status or current forgiveness attitudes, and low forgiveness was associated with poorer psychiatric health.ConclusionsTruth commissions should form part of, rather than be a substitute for, comprehensive therapeutic interventions for survivors of human rights abuses. Lack of forgiveness may be an important predictor of psychiatric risk in this population.


Societies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
Duncan Light ◽  
Remus Creţan ◽  
Andreea-Mihaela Dunca

Memorial museums are frequently established within transitional justice projects intended to reckon with recent political violence. They play an important role in enabling young people to understand and remember a period of human rights abuses of which they have no direct experience. This paper examines the impact of a memorial museum in Romania which interprets the human rights abuses of the communist period (1947–1989). It uses focus groups with 61 young adults and compares the responses of visitors and non-visitors to assess the impact of the museum on views about the communist past, as well as the role of the museum within post-communist transitional justice. The museum had a limited impact on changing overall perceptions of the communist era but visiting did stimulate reflection on the differences between past and present, and the importance of long-term remembrance; however, these young people were largely skeptical about the museum’s role within broader processes of transitional justice. The paper concludes that it is important to recognize the limits of what memorial museums can achieve, since young people form a range of intergenerational memories about the recent past which a museum is not always able to change.


Author(s):  
Matthew Evangelista

This chapter offers an assessment of the status of the Geneva Conventions as a normative regime and how it matters. The book’s case studies support the intuition that states fighting guerrilla insurgencies and terrorists face challenges in adhering to the laws of war. Yet many cases exhibit more compliance than the rationalist accounts would anticipate. In exploring mechanisms of noncompliance as well as compliance, the chapter highlights the importance of disaggregating the process—from leaders to individual soldiers—and highlights some of the counterintuitive insights that emerge. The international system—powerful states and institutions—serves not only as a constraint on human-rights abuses and war crimes but also sometimes as an enabler. Courts play less of a role than expected in the process of socialization and internalization of norms. The chapter concludes with reflections on the methodological challenges facing scholars who seek to assess the impact of international humanitarian law.


2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Maiangwa ◽  
Daniel E. Agbiboa

For many oil-bearing communities in petro-states around the world, the net effects of oil exploration have not only been devastating, but have also highlighted the double standards that are often applied by oil multinational corporations (MNCs). These organisations are far more likely to demand environmental and social mitigation efforts in the developed world than they are in a developing country. This paper seeks to demonstrate how the continued irresponsible activities of oil MNCs – specifically Shell – have fuelled restive conditions of ethnic militancy, brazen human rights abuses, environmental degradation and unsustainable peace in the Niger Delta. The paper particularly assesses the impact of the 2009 amnesty programme that was initiated to halt the downward spiral into violence in the Niger Delta and resolve the region's socio-economic challenges. The conclusion of this paper canvasses for greater social-ecological justice as a way forwards in addressing the Niger Delta conflict.


Author(s):  
James C Franklin

Abstract This research examines the impact of human rights protests on human rights abuses in seven Latin American countries—Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. I find that protests focused broadly on human rights are associated with significant declines in human rights abuses, controlling for important factors from previous studies. Furthermore, I argue that it is important to distinguish political repression (abuses that target political activists) from coercive state oppression, which has nonpolitical targets. These two types of abuses respond to different factors, but broadly focused human rights protests are found to decrease both types of abuses. I argue further that a strong human rights movement, indicated by frequent human rights protests, discourages the police abuses associated with oppression by raising the likelihood of accountability for such abuses, including by improving the likelihood of reforms to the criminal justice system.


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