This volume edited by Martin, Bravo and Van Ho is an important contribution to the business and human rights (BHR) literature. The focus is on the experiences of communities and individuals affected by harmful impacts related to economic activities. They are given voice through ten chapters by a diverse group of authors.
The book speaks to a wide audience of academics, civil society organizations and practice-oriented professionals interested in understanding how business activities harm human rights from the perspective of those affected, as well as audiences interested in the cultural, legal and practical complexities in providing effective access to remedy.
The Introduction by the editors places the overall issue of the book into context with a focus on the need for the voices of affected communities and individuals to be presented and heard. It gives an overview of the book and lays out insightful lessons on the effective organization and delivery of remedy for victims, as well as lessons for companies involved in human rights harm.
Several of the stories underscore the importance of involving potentially or actually affected stakeholders throughout the process of a business activity. The victims’ experiences offer empirical evidence to support meaningful stakeholder engagement in human rights due diligence as well as in providing redress. Several chapters illustrate the close connection between, on the one hand, the inadequacy of companies’ awareness and/or willingness to address risks and actual harm and, on the other, harm suffered. Several also illustrate the complexity of providing effective remedy, thereby speaking to the importance of companies not causing harm in the first place. The book is global in coverage in setting out experiences from most regions in the world. It is a strength that it does not only cover the Global South; however, with only one out of ten chapters addressing the Global North (the US) and another on a relatively well-off emerging economy (Turkey), readers may be misled to think that BHR harm and remedy problems are not very topical in the Global North.
The preface by editor Jena Martin offers a personal reflection framing the uniqueness of this book project. It leads up to a key point in the Introduction authored by the three editors: the significance of actively seeking out affected communities to learn about their experience of business-related harm and understand their perspectives. The Introduction offers reflections on the topics addressed by the chapters and the method adopted by the editors to allow the people affected to tell ‘their stories, in their words, from their perspectives’ (p. 3). The Introduction also provides insights emerging from the book, combined into the editors’ analysis of key lessons. Three of these lessons address remedy: ‘In order to provide access to remedy, you need to be accessible’; ‘When crafting a remedy, bear in mind its culture’; and ‘When devising remedies, consider the whole life’. One lesson relates to company commitments: ‘Do what you say you’re going to do’, and another the contextuality of harm: ‘One man’s villain is another one’s avenger’.
The individual chapters cover a range of individual or community experiences of human rights harm related to business activities. In chapter 1, taking as a point of departure the account of an individual’s experience of false arrest, Madeline Hung challenges multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) with regard to the comprehensiveness of their human rights coverage, understanding and respect. Based on the specific case and account set in Cameroon, she observes that although Fairtrade’s standards are quite comprehensive compared with many MSIs, the initiative’s scope is limited, thereby ‘making Fairtrade vulnerable to bad actors who seek to comply with the initiative’s minimum standards for inclusion while carrying out abuses and misconduct in adjacent areas’. In chapter 2, Piergiuseppe Parisi and Gareth Sims present the story of a former union leader as an example of hindrances to access to remedy in Colombia. The chapter is an intriguing but worrying account of the practical and legal challenges that victims face when seeking judicial remedy, including in a company’s home country. In chapter 3, Daysheelyn Anne P Brillo gives voice to a similarly disheartening account on the challenges of access to remedy for Filipino victims of injuries (in this case infertility) arising over time as a result of their exposure to chemicals/nematicides during their employment as banana plantation workers. At a time when access to judicial remedy is attracting attention in light of new legislative initiatives, in particular in the European Union, to expand access to the courts of companies’ home states for victims from their host states, chapters 2 and 3 provide thought-provoking insights into the litigation strategies of companies as well as the economic and other resources required of victims for obtaining effective remedy.
In chapter 4, Rajiv Maher and Adriana Bavin target the experience of the Bento Rodriguez village community in Brazil whose lives were fundamentally changed as a result of the Fundão Dam disaster in 2015. Following an introduction to the disaster, the responses by the company and the Brazilian government, the chapter relays the story of a 32-year-old victim from the community. She talks about the disaster, the impact, the return home, the struggle for justice, community divisions following the disaster and the struggle, and being labelled as victims. The chapter closes with some final reflections by the authors. In chapter 5, Bellinda Chinowawa shares an account of cultural clashes that can turn company efforts to provide remedy for mining-related relocations awry. Building on the experience of a family in the affected community, she addresses the context of a Chinese company operating in Southern Africa, the international legal framework as well as the human rights harmed and the ideal situation as per the UNGPs. The chapter gives rise to thoughts on why relocations still fail to meet individuals’ and families’ needs when human rights problems have been documented for decades.
Chapter 6, by Marianne Bertrand and Ariadna Tovar, focuses on human rights defenders in the context of natural resource extraction. Through the story of a Peruvian campesina farmer who is active in a social movement defending and promoting human rights in the Cajamarca region in Peru, the chapter highlights problems that follow a lack of grievance mechanisms at the beginning of a dispute, and the problematic use of the criminal system to settle land disputes. The story also illustrates how human rights defenders can be stigmatized in the local community. The chapter closes with a series of interesting observations on lessons learned and what should be improved to ensure a safe and enabling environment for human rights defenders. In chapter 7, Tara Van Ho enables residents from Cajamarca, Ibague and surrounding areas to share experiences of land conflicts, inadequate involvement, impacts on human rights defenders, and the need for remedy. Throughout the chapter, theoretical considerations drawing on international and inter-American human rights law set the experience of the communities and the lessons to be learned into wider perspectives. In chapter 8, Cigdem Cimrin and Yucel Demiral target occupational health and safety (OHS) in a free trade zone in Turkey. The authors apply an interesting combination of a human rights-based approach and occupational medicine to explore FDI-related impacts on OHS. In the conventional social science BHR context this chapter is important in reminding readers of the importance of involving relevant experts, for example in occupational medicine where OHS may be an issue. Chapter 9, by Jennifer D Olive with Jena Martin, addresses coal mining in West Virginia, in the United States. This chapter also considers OHS issues. Somewhat like chapter 4, it introduces the context and then leaves most of the pages to the voice of a veteran coal miner who responds to interview questions, followed by a brief conclusion. Finally, in chapter 10 Michael Clemens and Maria Isabel Cubides recount the stories of communities in the gold mining belt in Gauteng province in South Africa. Starting from the social impacts of mine closures, the chapter contributes to the BHR and company law literature by illustrating that even the closing of environmentally (and OHS-wise) harmful business activities can have problematic human rights impacts in its own right and calling on governments to integrate human rights in domestic law governing liquidations.
The authors are to be commended for their insistence on giving victims a voice, and on doing so with few filters in terms of specific methodological, theoretical and/or analytical requirements or styles that are the mainstay of most academic articles and many edited volumes. This gain appears to come at the cost of mixed consistency across the chapters in terms of style, method, theoretical foundations and analysis. In view of the larger aim of the volume and the novelty of the contents that it brings forth, the cost is probably outweighed by the benefits of the new information shared. However, considered as a whole, the chapters could have benefited from adopting a more uniform structure. This would both enhance readability across the chapters and assist those wishing to apply the unique stories told to do so. Just a few chapters set out methodological and theory-based considerations, something considered a basic feature in the academic traditions in several BHR fields, such as organizational and management studies and business ethics. Those chapters demonstrate that this can be done in a manner that does not detract from the stories of the communities to whom the chapters lend voice. Most chapters offer ample introductions and analyses, but a few hardly any. This makes it more difficult for readers to grasp the implications of the stories told, especially because readers rarely have as much understanding of the background and context as the chapter authors.
Regardless of such shortcomings, the book is highly recommended for anyone with an interest in the experience of victims of business-related human rights harm, the challenges that victims encounter with regard to access to remedy (whether state-based or operational-level), and points that business enterprises should consider when conducting due diligence to identify risks or actual harm and organizing operational-level remedy mechanisms.
