scholarly journals Human Rights and Corporate Reinsurance: From Ensuring Rights to Insuring Risks

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Scheper ◽  
Johanna Gördemann
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Value Chains ◽  
Private Governance ◽  
Institutional Power ◽  
Corporate Form ◽  
Norm Compliance ◽  
Hydroelectric Dam ◽  
Human Rights Norms ◽  
Belo Monte

With the aimof grounding the analysis of private transnational human rights governance, the article examines how a European reinsurance company links its human rights policy to its core business of underwriting risks in the case of Belo Monte, a large hydroelectric dam in the Brazilian Amazon. Based on the current international regulatory framework, the global political economy of reinsurance is becoming a constitutive element of human rights governance. Conceptualising underwriting as a social practice, we observe how human rights norms are translated into the corporate form of risks. This process goes beyond questions of norm compliance and involves practices of valuation and boundary-drawing based on the underwriter’s competences and background knowledgeabout reinsurance markets, value chains and corporate hierarchies. We conclude with a critique of private governance as an institutional pillar of the human rights system that rests on business rationales rather than lending institutional power to rights-holders.

Is the Good News About Law Compliance Good News About Norm Compliance? The Case of Racial Equality

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 351-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoltán I. Búzás
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Racial Equality ◽  
Good News ◽  
Norm Violations ◽  
Norm Compliance ◽  
Human Rights Advocacy ◽  
The Law ◽  
Compliance With The Law ◽  
Human Rights Norms

AbstractThe most important international human rights norms are legalized or codified in international treaty law. Yet pernicious practices at odds with these norms endure and sometimes even increase after legalization. According to conventional wisdom, this is because agents commit to but do not comply with international law and the underlying norms. I develop a theory of evasion to explain why norm violations persist even when states technically comply with the law. Because legalization transposes social norms into international law imperfectly, it creates gaps between laws and underlying norms. Because of these norm-law gaps, legality and normative appropriateness will diverge. States caught between opposing pressures from pro-violation and pro-compliance groups exploit this gap through what I call evasion—the intentional minimization of normative obligations that technically complies with international law but violates underlying norms. I demonstrate the theory's empirical purchase in the cases of the French expulsion of Roma immigrants and the Czech school segregation of Roma children. Under the cover of technical compliance with the law, these states violated the norm of racial equality. The argument cautions that the good news about law compliance is not necessarily good news about norm compliance, broadens our understanding of norm violators' agency, and has practical implications for human rights advocacy.

Contradictions of Green Development: Human Rights and Environmental Norms in Light of Belo Monte Dam Activism

2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
EVE Z. BRATMAN
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Transnational Advocacy ◽  
Norm Diffusion ◽  
Political Opportunities ◽  
Green Development ◽  
Hydroelectric Dam ◽  
Political Alignments ◽  
Environmental Human Rights ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Belo Monte

AbstractThis paper offers a historical examination of the ways in which advocacy strategies and tactics have shifted in relation to political opportunities, using a case study of a hydroelectric dam project in the Brazilian Amazon, known as the Belo Monte Dam. Drawing on over three decades of resistance by transnational activist coalitions, the paper looks at how new tactics and political alignments have altered the dynamics of activism and norm diffusion in Brazilian domestic environmental, human rights and development policies. The paper argues that current theories of norm diffusion inadequately explain backslides and tend to underestimate the complexity of domestic political alignments. The case adds political insight to our understanding of the relationship of transnational advocacy strategy to environmental and human rights political realities in Brazil.

Reconciling Rights and Obligations

2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 140-172
Author(s):  
Pernille Ironside
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Common Law ◽  
International Standards ◽  
Freedom Of Religion ◽  
Northern Nigeria ◽  
Law System ◽  
Constitutional Legality ◽  
Human Rights Norms ◽  
Criminal Matters

This article examines the debate concerning the recent reinstatement of Shari`ah law with respect to criminal matters in Northern Nigeria. The discussion explores the inherent challenges in reconciling the equally entrenched and passionate views of pro-Shari`ah supporters on their right to freedom of religion with those that question its application in terms of human rights norms and obligations, and its constitutional legality. The analysis concludes that Shari`ah laws can coexist with Nigeria’s common law system and remain relevant in the context of Islam, provided that its principles are adapted and modernized to comport with international standards for due process and are interpreted and applied consistently.

In Lieu of a Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Linarelli ◽  
Margot E Salomon ◽  
Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Current State ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
International Economic Law ◽  
Human Rights Norms

This chapter recaps the main themes of the volume, ie that the international law of the global economy is in a state of disorder. Claims about the justice, fairness, or benefits of the current state of international law as it relates to the global economy are fanciful. A more credible picture emerges when one considers who is protected, against what, and those relations that are valued and those that are not. Moreover, these claims above all require a suspension of a reflective attitude about what international law actually says and does. When it comes to international economic law, power is masked behind a veil of neutrality when it certainly is not neutral in the interests it protects and offends. As for international human rights law, it overlooks the ways in which it props up extreme capitalism foreclosing the possibility of transformative structural change to neoliberal capitalism. In its most radical areas, human rights norms have been blocked from making demands on the design of the global economy precisely because of their transformative potential. Among the central critiques of international law presented in this book is that international law must be justifiable to those who are subject to it.

Germany

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentin Aichele
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Direct Effect ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Persons With Disabilities ◽  
Public International Law ◽  
Monitoring Mechanism ◽  
International Human ◽  
Human Rights Norms

This chapter analyses the use and interpretation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in sixty-nine decisions of German federal courts between 2009 and mid-2016. German courts’ failure to be proactive in demonstrating ‘friendliness towards public international law’ when dealing with international human rights norms has been criticised. The National CRPD Monitoring Mechanism addressed problems in the application of the law. This chapter investigates the courts’ understanding of basic CRPD concepts, judicial techniques, interpretation methods and specific CRPD provisions. The importance of the concepts of self-executing provisions and direct effect is discussed. In quantitative terms, German courts have referred to the CRPD more often than any other UN international human rights instrument. Furthermore, in qualitative terms, federal courts have become more receptive towards the CRPD. However, it is clear that much of the potential for courts to use the CRPD in the realisation of the rights of persons with disabilities remains untapped.

Women’s Participation in the Public Domain Under Human Rights Law: Towards a Participatory Equality Paradigm Shift

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Rubio-Marín
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Private Governance ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Full Diversity ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Indigenous Groups ◽  
Participation Of Women

This chapter explores how human rights law has contributed to the shift towards participatory gender equality by legitimating the adoption of quotas and parity mechanisms to ensure women’s equal participation in decision-making. Since the adoption of CEDAW, human rights law has moved away from formal equality notions that simply affirm women’s equal political rights. Instead, we see growing endorsement of substantive equality doctrines that validate the adoption of gender quotas, initially as temporary special measures to ensure women equal opportunities, and, more recently, as permanent measures targeting the gender-balanced composition of an ever-expanding range of public and private governance bodies. The chapter explores how human rights law connects this participatory turn to issues of pluralism, calling attention to the need for public bodies to represent the full diversity of the population, and calling on state parties to increase the participation of women from ethnic minorities, indigenous groups, and religious minorities.

Corporate Liability Design for Human Rights Abuses: Individual and Entity Liability for Due Diligence

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Global Supply Chains ◽  
Due Diligence ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Human Rights Norms ◽  
Corporate Liability ◽  
Human Rights Due Diligence ◽  
Individual Human

Abstract In this article, I critically review the economic theory of corporate liability design, focusing on the allocation of liability between a corporation and its individual human agents. I apply this theory to transnational commercial contexts where human rights abuses occur and assess the likely efficacy of some putative liability regimes, including regimes requiring corporations to undertake human rights due diligence throughout their global supply chains. I advance a set of general considerations justifying the efficacy of due diligence in relation to alternative liability regimes. I argue, however, that due diligence regimes will likely under-deter severe human rights abuses unless they are supported by substantial entity-level sanctions and, in at least some cases, by supplementary liability for individual executives. The analysis has significant policy implications for current national and international efforts to enforce human rights norms against corporations.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document