Corporate Accountability for Human Rights Violations

Interdisciplinary Studies in Human Rights 16 RalucaGrosescu JohnG.DaleEditors Corporate Accountability forHuman Rights Violations Civil Society and Transnational Activism across theWorld Interdisciplinary Studies in Human Rights Volume 16 Editor-in-Chief MarkusKrajewski, Faculty of Law, Friedrich-Alexander-University ErlangenNürnberg, Erlangen,Germany Series Editors PetraBendel, Institute of Political Science, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen,Germany HeinerBielefeldt, Institute of Political Science, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen,Germany AndreasFrewer, Institute for History and Ethics of Medicine, Friedrich-AlexanderUniversity Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen,Germany ManfredL.Pirner, Religious Education, Friedrich-Alexander-University ErlangenNürnberg, Nürnberg,Germany Human rights are one of the normative cornerstones of contemporary international law and global governance. Due to the complexities of actual or potential violations of human rights and in light of current crises, new and interdisciplinary research is urgently needed. The series Interdisciplinary Studies in Human Rights recognizes the growing importance and necessity of interdisciplinary research in human rights. The series consists of monographs and collected volumes addressing human rights research from different disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives, including but not limited to philosophy, law, political science, education, and medical ethics. Its goal is to explore new and contested questions such as the extraterritorial application of human rights and their relevance for non-state actors, as well as the philosophical and theoretical foundations of human rights. The series also addresses policy questions of current interest including the human rights of migrants and refugees, LGBTI rights, and bioethics, as well as business and human rights. The series editors are Members of the Centre for Human Rights ErlangenNürnberg (CHREN), an interdisciplinary research center at Friedrich-AlexanderUniversity Erlangen-Nürnberg. The Advisory Board brings together human rights scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines and regional backgrounds. The series welcomes suggestions for publications of academic research falling into the series subject matter. Raluca Grosescu • John G. Dale Editors Corporate Accountability for Human Rights Violations Civil Society andTransnational Activism across theWorld ISSN 2509-2960 ISSN 2509-2979 (electronic) Interdisciplinary Studies in Human Rights ISBN 978-3-032-05568-2 ISBN 978-3-032-05569-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-05569-9 This work was supported by National University of Political Studies and Public Administration. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2026 Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercialNoDerivatives 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/byncnd/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if you modified the licensed material. 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This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland If disposing of this product, please recycle the paper. Editors Raluca Grosescu SNSPA Bucuresti, Romania John G. Dale George Mason University Fairfax, VA, USA . This book is an open access publication. To all who fight corporate impunity across the globe. vii This volume is the result of an international conference organised by Henry Rammelt, Andru Chiorean, and the editors in 2023, in Bucharest. As Colombian participant, Daniel Marín López, Romania was a rather unforeseen place for such an event, given the neoliberal thinking that has taken over Eastern Europe since the 1990s. Yet, the ERC-Consolidator Project Transnational Advocacy Networks and Corporate Accountability for Major International Crimes– implemented by the National University of Political Science and Public Administration (Bucharest)– brought us together in Romania, a country where corporate accountability and business and human rights are indeed incipient topics of activism. Despite this context, or maybe even because of it, we aimed to move forward the global debates on antiimpunity campaigns regarding transnational corporations and their involvement in human rights violations, with a conference on corporate accountability to take place in Eastern Europe. As Daniel put it, “manifestos” for corporate accountability can emerge in unexpected places, even in neoliberal dominated semi-peripheries. We thank all speakers and discussants for their participation and their valuable contributions, comments and critiques. We are particularly grateful to Măriuca Petre, Mircea Vâlceanu, Roxana Robu and Cornelia Mareș (all from SNSPA) for the energy and effort they expended in organising the conference and the gracious hospitality they extended to all of us. At different stages, Radu Mareș (Lund University), Sabine Michalowski (University of Essex), Ruxandra Ivan (Bucharest University), Daniel Marín López (University of Los Andes), Andrei Miroiu (SNSPA, Bucharest) and Arpad Todor (SNSPA, Bucharest) provided valuable feedback on different contributions and the volume as a whole. Their criticism has motivated, challenged, and inspired us. All mistakes and divergent opinions are of course ours. We also kindly appreciate Markus Krajewski, Brigitte Reschke, and Peter Pushpanathan at Springer for their support. This volume is part of the ERC-Consolidator project Transnational Advocacy Networks and Corporate Accountability for Major International Crimes. The project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the Acknowledgments viii European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 101002993 — CORPACCOUNT), implemented by the National University of Political Science and Public Administration (Bucharest) between 2021 and 2026. In addition, our collaboration with the Movement Engaged Research Hub (George Mason University, US) has contributed to the improvement of many contributions to this volume through presentations at various conferences and seminars. Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Re-Envisioning Corporate Accountability for Human Rights Abuses. Civil Society and Transnational Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Raluca Grosescu and John G. Dale Corporate Accountability: A Fragmented Global Cause? “A World Where There Are Many Worlds.” Fragmentation of Civil Society Advocacy for a UN Business and Human Rights Treaty . . . . . . . . 21 Andru Chiorean Transnational Advocacy Networks and Corporate Accountability: Visions, Divisions, and Convergences of a Global Cause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Henry P. Rammelt Corporate Accountability and the Ecological Turn: Mining Lessons from the Rights of Nature Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 John G. Dale The Values and Limitations of Transnational Activism for Corporate Accountability in Post-Civil War Guatemala . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Raluca Grosescu Transnational Campaigns Against Corporate Impunity The Transnationalisation of Civil Society in East Asia’s War Redress Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Timothy Webster Trade Unions and Corporate Accountability in Argentina: Transnational and Intersectoral Alliances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Victoria Basualdo Contents 6 mobilisation of trade unionists and the alliances they forged with other national and international justice and memory activists and NGOs. The contribution focuses on the recent agreement between the São Paulo Prosecutor’s Office and the Volkswagen subsidiary in Brazil (VW do Brazil), signed in 2020. It demonstrates how—in a country marked by total impunity for dictatorial crimes—trade unions (especially in São Paulo state) played a crucial role in sparking debates about the role of Western corporations as accomplices in gross human rights violations and the interconnection between neoliberal economic doctrines and the systematic attack on labour and socio-economic rights in Latin America. Such mobilisations succeeded in enforcing this narrative through the work of the São Paulo Truth Commission, civil lawsuits against VW do Brazil, and the publicization of their cause in Western venues by cooperating with European human rights lawyers. Yet, unionists—and other Brazilian human rights groups—finally split over the terms of the agreement with VW do Brazil, a settlement that revealed the limits of civil litigation as a means of addressing corporate violence and the structural inequalities in the neoliberal economic system. Transnational corporate accountability coalitions have also started to coalesce in Africa, as discussed in Rasul Minja’s chapter on mobilisations in the East African Community (EAC). Organisations such as the East African Law Society and the East African Human Rights Institute have increasingly played a critical role in supporting lawyers and litigants across the region, as well as filing complaints on their own behalf at the East African Court of Justice. Moving to Western Europe, Caroline Lichuma examines the mobilisations of German, French and Luxemburgish civil society for the adoption of due diligence laws (DDLs). She argues that both the French (2017) and German (2021) laws were the result of wide mobilisations from below that assembled a variety of organisations and professional groups, including NGOs, trade unions, epistemic communities, and church-based initiatives. While Luxemburg has not yet (2025) enacted such a law, civil society organisations succeeded in putting an initial legislative proposal on the agenda in 2023. Moreover, national coalitions for DDLs cooperated across borders, borrowing and adapting activist tactics and discourse frameworks employed by their counterparts. The importance of cooperation across professional sectors is also emphasised by Thomas Beckers’ contribution on Dutch civil society organisations attempting to open civil law trials for corporate human rights violations committed abroad. Becker argues that in order to succeed, activists must fulfil several roles, including kickstarters, pacemakers, watchdogs, and informal assistantprosecutors. Such functions require the involvement and cooperation of various professional groups, such as lawyers, political activists, journalists and epistemic communities. Focusing on criminal and civil litigations in Argentina, Gabriel Pereira and Leigh Payne highlight the role of national institutional innovators and civil society groups as critical drivers of corporate accountability efforts. They revisit Keck and Sikkink’s classic “boomerang model” of transnational pressure exercised by transnational advocacy networks to challenge the power of states that often protect or complicitly enable corporate malfeasance. They argue that the model does not capture R. Grosescu and J. G. Dale 7 significant local dynamics of power that are critical to the success of corporate accountability campaigns. In their view, while transnational mobilisations are important, intra-country and inter-sectoral collaborations are often more productive for achieving justice. Fernando Mendiola and Juan Carlos García Funes emphasise the ability of Spanish grassroot movements and trade unions to embed forced labour perpetrated under Franco’s regime in twenty-first century Spanish memory politics. While the 1977 Amnesty Law remains in place and impedes prosecutions for human rights violations committed under the dictatorship, local victim groups and memory associations from Andalusia, Aragon, the Basque Country, and Valencia succeed in implementing memorialisation projects concerning forced labour perpetrated by both state and private companies and even include the right to recognition and reparation for such crimes in regional legislation. The Spanish case reflects the importance of national intersectoral activism versus transnational mobilisations, since local actors cooperated little across borders. A similar case of grassroot activism is examined by Stephanie Triefus and Irina Velicu in their chapter on the Roșia Montana movement in Romania. Grassroots, anti-extractivist communities from a small village in Transylvania, supported by national and transnational advocacy networks, succeeded in stopping a Canadian mining project, engaged in cyanide extraction, and then inscribe their village— Roșia Montana—on the UNESCO world heritage list. However, the international investment arbitration procedure introduced by the Canadian company against the Romanian state perpetuated environmental injustice and illustrated what may be called “green crime,” facilitated by a prevailing bias in arbitration procedures in favour of multinational corporate interests, even if Romania finally won. The volume thus highlights that struggles around the inadequacies of the current international order and subsequent corporate impunity are starting to coalesce across the world. Transnational and intersectoral activism create spaces for new discourses and lines of action, even though securing a genuine counter-hegemonic victory against the neoliberal order and corporate power at a global level remains limited. The veto power of business actors in global affairs and the reluctance of governments to engage in radical reforms for social and environmental justice severely constrain the transformation of the current international order. Free trade agreements and subsequent international arbitration procedures are only one example—as illustrated by Triefus and Velicu—of how social and environmental injustices continue to affect local communities even after successful efforts to stop destructive extractivist projects. The fact that funding for social activism for corporate accountability remains dominated by state and international institutions and liberal-leaning foundations—as demonstrated by Rammelt—contributes to a deradicalisation of both discourses and actions. Judicial mechanisms, such as criminal trials and civil litigation, are severely limited by the current definitions of core international crimes and by the possibility of legal settlements that, while bringing some financial redress for victims, generally exonerate economic actors of any legal and moral responsibility (as emphasised by Bohoslavsky and Goñi, and by Raluca Grosescu’s chapter on transnational cooperation for corporate accountability in Guatemala). Finally, national political constellations often impede accountability Introduction: Re-Envisioning Corporate Accountability for Human Rights Abuses. Civil… 8 projects, such as the amnesty laws still in force in Brazil and Spain. Moreover, as demonstrated by Minja, human rights and environmental activists in the EAC face not only a legislative vacuum in terms of business and human rights, but also systematic repression exerted by their authoritarian governments. While many case studies in this collection highlight the limitations of particular campaigns, they also reveal that civil societies working transnationally have gleaned lessons from their struggles for corporate accountability that can serve to sustain the broader movement. John G.Dale examines a transnational, indigenous-led rights of nature movement in Ecuador that successfully pre-empted the rights and extractive practices of transnational and state-owned mining corporations while creating new rights to protect indigenous communities, the Amazonian forests they inhabit, and novel legal forms of data ownership. He then compares this case to a U.S.-focused corporate accountability movement that differently constructed rights of nature to challenge corporate rights of extractivist development to demonstrate how the rights of nature project in Ecuador has subsequently influenced the political strategies of corporate accountability in the U.S.Indeed, U.S-based militants have shifted their strategy from using a “human right to nature” to a “rights of nature” discourse, realising that the former approach only served to reinforce environmental law as property law in U.S. courts, and that community arguments for protecting the environment (as “natural resources”) continued to lose out to corporate property rights in corporatefriendly state courts. Although the “rights of nature” discourse has not yet resulted in U.S. court victories, an analysis of these campaigns should not be narrowly assessed in terms of immediate victory or defeat in the courts or legislatures. These campaigns are also deliberately engaged in symbolic politics to educate and mobilise support for and from other communities and movements. These rights projects—and the alternative discourses they generate within and disseminate beyond legal arenas—provide critical resources for sustaining the kind of public collective memory and activism that future movements can draw upon in the struggle for corporate accountability and the reform of rights’ approaches that have often served the interests of corporations over the protection of communities and ecosystems. 3 Corporate Accountability asaFragmented Global Cause This volume thus shares the optimism of many scholars who underline the crucial role of civil society in positively transforming national and international norms, including in the field of corporate accountability. Nevertheless, the book also calls for a careful analysis of the ideologies and political narratives that underpin accountability claims. The scholarship that has taken an actor-focused approach to corporate accountability12 has thus far paid little attention to the heterogeneity of groups 12 Dale (2011); Payne etal. (2020). The very few exceptions that have underlined fragmentation within the corporate accountability field are Grosescu (2019); Prem (2020). R. Grosescu and J. G. Dale 9 and networks involved in corporate accountability processes, and the way they build different—sometimes divergent—strategies for dealing with corporate violence, according to their different regional and professional backgrounds and diverse visions about world politics, economic doctrines, development, and human rights. Furthermore, current approaches have often confined themselves to (and have taken for granted) substantialist understandings of rights as promoted by the UN and most international organisations, providing no conceptual room for the way civil society and social movements imagine alternative, more inclusive visions of rights. Collective activism for creating rights from below (including to living non-humans) and their implications for corporate accountability remain understudied. We argue that civil societies and social movements engaged in corporate accountability remain fragmented and often divided over the meaning of, and solutions for reckoning with corporate violence. This is another constraint that limits the formation of a unified and coherent global cause. Our collection thus challenges previous works which have depicted global pro-accountability movements as monolithic campaigns, driven by idealistic activists, bound together by shared values and common interests.13 We contend that the locus of activism, within different political, economic and cultural contexts, generates diverse approaches to corporate accountability. Ideological divisions over the meaning of human rights, economic globalisation and development also create divergent visions of how to contend with corporate human rights violations.14 Finally, different professional agendas of activism, as well as competition for funding and symbolic capital, frame different tactics and repertoires of action across corporate accountability campaigns. The chapters by Andru Chiorean and Henry Rammelt reveal the diverse ideological inclinations of NGOs and social movements that participate in global coalitions for corporate accountability: from postcolonial and class-based approaches to liberal and socio-liberal frameworks. Such variations produce tensions between networks and have different impacts on national governments and international organisations, with the liberal version as the preferred approach of Western governments and donors. The cases of Global Campaign and ESCR-Net examined by Chiorean are two convincing examples, which are then sustained by Rammelt’s wider quantitative analysis. In her contribution on transnational cooperation for corporate accountability in Guatemala, Raluca Grosescu highlights the tension between liberal discourses and Indigenous narratives. While positing the importance of transnational activism for the very survival of anti-extractivist movements in Guatemala, Grosescu also underlines that Western support for accountability campaigns has often been framed within a liberal lexicon of rights that has dominated global affairs since the mid-1970s and limited the capacity of Guatemalan Indigenous communities to assert a politics of alternative, non-liberal and non-Western autonomy. For his part, Rasul Minja demonstrates how in the EAC, activists are also 13 Keck and Sikkink (1998). For similar approaches, see Dale (2011), Payne etal. (2020), SaageMaaß etal. (2021). 14 Our collection thus links the literature on corporate accountability to broader analysis on neoliberal globalization, human rights and development: Goodale (2022); Manfred Novak (2016); Rajagopal (2009); Kaltenborn etal. (2020). Introduction: Re-Envisioning Corporate Accountability for Human Rights Abuses. Civil… 10 divided over the best solution for dealing with corporate violence. On the one hand, some organisations accept the corporate social responsibility(CSR) frameworks and the self-regulatory agreements proposed by companies and their main representative, the East African Business Council. On the other hand, more contentious NGOs and networks, including the East African Law Society struggle for the adoption of binding norms and support legal actions in court. Fragmentation over corporate accountability strategies also emerge within movements with similar ideological orientations. Bohoslavsky and Goñi highlight that despite the fact that leftist national and international NGOs achieved an initial consensus in launching civil litigation against VW do Brazil, activists ultimately split over the terms of the agreement reached between the company and the São Paulo Prosecutor’s Office. While some hailed the settlement as the only (although limited) access to justice in a country marked by total impunity for dictatorial crimes, others criticised it as a form of “corporate wash” and even as a dangerous precedent for the perpetration of systematic corporate and state violence against human rights and environmental activists that has characterised contemporary Brazil. While underlining the role of trade unions in corporate accountability campaigns in Argentina, Basualdo’s chapter underscores that the trade union movement was politically heterogeneous and varied in terms of their relationship with the dictatorship. This heterogeneity led to a fragmentation of their engagement in justice processes, and of their historical narratives about the past. In a less contentions form, fragmentation results from the lack of dialogue between various movements working in different regions. While actors from South America, East Africa, and Southeast Asia frequently collaborate with Western European and North American militants, and across borders withing their own regions, South-South cooperation remains weak and knowledge about other regional contexts and social mobilisations poor. Minja’s chapter also emphasises that while cross-border cooperation between NGOs from the EAC exists, it remains limited due to the existential threat that such organisations face from their own national governments. Moreover, Minja underlines the dominance and subsequent shortcoming of “upward accountability” in civil society activities at the expense of “downward” (bottom-up) accountability. Yet, while this volume identifies how internal fragmentation operates to limit corporate accountability efforts, it also notes that this fragmentation can enable social action. The diversity of experiences, local understandings of (in)justice, cultural repertoires of collective action, modes of being, visions of the future, and historical relations to the corporations (and states) they target need not be understood only as constraining: it is also under conditions of internal diversity that new critical and progressive resistance narratives emerge. Movements that can manage these tensions and contradictions without dissolving can over time work to identify and address their own sources of contention and find ways to experimentally deploy a wider range of discourses as they confront a diverse array of challenges.15 As Big 15 See Sturgeon (1997); Latour (2018). R. Grosescu and J. G. Dale 11 Tech-driven development of artificial intelligence and data mining becomes increasingly entangled with traditional practices of extractivist mining for oil, gas, coal, and precious metals and minerals,16 the corporate accountability movement has stared to take into consideration nonhuman rights to adequately defend and mobilise support for the humans, communities, and ecosystems being impacted. Drawing on relational approaches to rights projects,17 Dale observes in his chapter on the “rights of nature” movements in Ecuador and the United States, that this activism articulates a rights discourse that some scholars and practitioners argue will further fragment existing human rights projects (including those that advocate for the UN-recognised human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment) and fail to hold corporations accountable in the Western legal systems of the Global North. However, a relational approach to understanding the rights of nature, humans, and corporations opens up strategic discursive possibilities for bridging and strengthening transnational corporate accountability activism without eclipsing the potentially emancipatory quest of human rights advocates to render us more fully human. 4 The Values andLimitations ofTransnational Activism The fragmentation of corporate accountability strategies also impacts the outcome of cross-border mobilisations. Consequently, this volume conceptualises transnational activism as a Janus-faced paradigm and provides a nuanced perspective on both the value of transnational cooperation and its shortcomings in terms of unequal power relations, discursive domination, and dependencies between organisations from the Global North and the Global South. On the one hand, most contributions to this book argue that the formation of transnational coalitions for corporate accountability is essential. By connecting organisations, communities, and individuals across countries and regions, transnational activism brings attention to the global character of the structural inequalities and corporate violence that exemplify the contemporary world.18 It also creates spaces of interaction that reconfigure relations of community, class, race, and gender beyond conflicting national interests and geopolitical anxieties. Coalitions across borders thus forge new solidarities and common causes against the oppressive state and market arrangements that underpin corporate impunity. Moreover, they help secure funding and offer support to local human rights and environmental activists repressed by their own governments (often in collaboration with transnational or national economic elites). It renders such groups more visible both internationally and in the home countries of the offending multinational corporations and, 16 Crawford (2021). 17 Jung 2024; Rodríguez-Garavito 2024. 18 Khagram etal. (2022); Tarrow (1994); de Sousa Santos and Rodriguez-Garavito (2005). Introduction: Re-Envisioning Corporate Accountability for Human Rights Abuses. Civil… 12 thus, impacts the behaviour of international organisations, transnational networks of governance and the corporations themselves.19 Finally, cooperation across borders opens up dynamic dialogues between different cultures and thus erodes powerful nationalist agendas and civilisational (mis)conceptions. It enables citizens living in different nation-states, regions, and cultural contexts to understand, and imagine alternative visions about the social world and comprehend how their (in)action affects or is affected by that of individuals living elsewhere. Transnational activism thus helps circulate alternative, more inclusive, ideas about rights, development and democracy that are rooted in non-Western, non-liberal forms of thinking—such as Indigenous cosmovisions or postcolonial and decolonial approaches to world politics. This volume thus posits the importance of moving beyond methodological nationalism to understand mobilisations for corporate accountability, and, in so doing, makes the case for inter-connected domestic, regional, and transnational contestations against injustice, inequality and impunity.20 On the other hand, critical studies of transnational activism have highlighted that global struggles for rights and justice remain a terrain dominated by organisations and institutions that are based in the richest countries of the Global North—which often function as donors for organisations in the Global South. Consequently, global issues are typically communicated and played out by professional groups and elites from Western Europe and North America—thereby perpetuating neo-colonial exclusion and injustice.21 Moreover, NGOs from the Global North do not necessarily challenge hegemonic systems that generate structural inequality and dispossession. On the contrary, they frequently channel private or government funding, which arrives with particular conditions that impose Western values or serves certain Northern economic or political interests,22 including the effective naturalisation of markets as the key driver of progress and development.23 In most cases, discourses from the Global North remain confined to Western realities and liberal understandings of the social world, which are then deliberately or unintentionally exported to the Global South. Even when adopting more radical approaches, Western-based NGOs have to translate demands from the Global South into a vocabulary familiar to Western societies in order to gain support for their campaigns.24 These translations often distort social realities and generate exotic and simplistic accounts of non-Western societies, particularly as far as Indigenous populations are concerned. The dependence of Global Southern civil society actors on Western institutional donors further limits their actions. Global Southern activists, and especially grassroot groups with few financial resources must market themselves and adapt to the political ideas and organisational behaviour of donors. They often have to frame 19 Keck and Sikkink (1998); Dale (2011); Dale and Samara (2008). 20 Dale and Kislenko (2022). 21 Sénit and Biermann (2021); Struett (2008). 22 Munck (2006). 23 Mitchell (2002); Unger (2007); Block (2018). 24 de Sousa Santos (2015); Gill (2009); Bueckert (2019); Freeman (2024). R. Grosescu and J. G. Dale 13 their cause in legal categories and definitions that do not necessarily fit their own society’s visions of the social world.25 Dependence on Western funding risks a reformulation of goals, a de-radicalisation of discourses, and the use of a toolbox and a vocabulary provided by the Western (liberal) script.26 Several contributions in this volume highlight this two-sided feature of transnational activism for corporate accountability. Grosescu demonstrates the crucial role of Westren-based NGOs in supporting Guatemalan Indigenous human rights and environmental defenders. In a country marked by endemic corruption, pervasive racism against Indigenous populations, and violence against anti-extractivist campaigners, international support and transnational cooperation were crucial for securing the very survival of those who opposed extractivist development and the dominant economic elite. Nevertheless, the corporate accountability campaigns developed in the Global North must translate Global South, Indigenous discourses into a vocabulary embedded in liberal Western thinking about rights and economics. Such translation alters Global South narratives and emphasises the limits of transnational class and culture-based solidarities. In his chapter on global coalitions for corporate accountability, Chiorean points to the connections between human rights approaches and economic questions. He shows how more radical organisations—most of them originating in the Global South—mobilise the language of human rights to explicitly denounce capitalism, demand the economic self-determination of people from the Global South, and advocate for a more equal redistribution of resources at a global level. In contrast, many organisations from the Global North vacate the economic arena and confine themselves to criticising violations of civil and political rights. In so doing, they allow for a shift in responsibility for global poverty and inequality away from international economic arrangements toward states in the Global South. They also cultivate an antipathy towards any politicisation of the economy, effectively serving to naturalise the market. The language of human rights is thus used to undermine an amalgamation of political solidarity capable of challenging the unequal tenets of the current international economy. Examining the national coalitions for the adoption of DDLs, Lichuma highlights that while members of these coalitions collaborate with Global South counterparts, they have little power to incorporate Global South claims in Western European national legislations. Parliamentary debates on DDLs remain dominated by national political actors, without consultation with actors from the Global South. The emergence of norms on business and human rights in Europe reflects the asymmetrical power dynamic between the Global North and South with problematic ramifications for states, communities and individuals of the Global South that continue to be disenfranchised from the negotiation legal processes relevant to them. The contributions by Becker and Grosescu emphasise how corporate accountability activists in the Netherlands and Canada respectively act in the name of Global Southern victims 25 Bob (2012). 26 Saunders and Roth (2019); Samson (2020). Introduction: Re-Envisioning Corporate Accountability for Human Rights Abuses. Civil… 14 of corporate violence, but design their pro-accountability strategies within their own judicial and political contexts. Interested in opening avenues of justice, their reference point remains the Dutch or the Canadian systems with their own opportunities and constraints. In terms of funding, Rammelt underscores how organisations from the Global South, due to their dependency on donors from the Global North, borrow established vocabularies of rights and subsequent repertoires of action that do not necessarily correspond to their economic and cultural contexts. In Guatemala, as highlighted by Grosescu, international funding for anti-extractivist activism is generally filtered through Western NGOs working in the country, which are able—by dint of their Western vocabulary and fundraising skills—to attract doners and become the legitimate redistributors of funding to local communities and NGOs. While Indigenous groups and other poorly resourced movements benefit from this financial support, they are forced to connect their demands to Western liberal activist agendas rather than to projects that can ensure their economic and political autonomy. Moreover, Western Europe and North America remain the main nodes of global entanglement in terms of corporate accountability, often at the expense of South-South cooperation. While several chapters in the book also underline the existence of regional cooperation within Latin America, EAC or South-East Asia, trans-regional networks that do not involve Western countries are rare. More research is needed to unpack the reasons behind this limited cooperation, but the lack of funding likely stands as one key explanation. There are, however, more optimistic accounts in which the Janus-faced paradigm is less visible. Timothy Webster demonstrates the role of cross-border collaboration—between Japanese and Korean citizens on the one hand, and between Japanese and Chinese citizens on the other—in generating trust and reconciliation. Bohoslavsky and Goñi and Basualdo also provide convincing examples of the critical importance of transnational activism in the cooperation between Western and Latin American militants and in the corporate accountability coalitions formed within the Southern Cone itself. To be sure, “going transnational” is not always a winning strategy for organisations or communities seeking justice.27 Transnational activism encompasses both promises and perils for the corporate accountability movement. How corporate accountability activists organise the social relations upon which they forge their transnational solidarities clearly matters. This collection not only identifies how various ways of transnationally structuring these relations has enabled and constrained collective action for corporate accountability, but also provides readers with methodological (ethnographic, historical, statistical and comparative) insights into the sources, processes, and patterns of their reproduction. In so doing, it lays critical new groundwork for addressing the conditions under which thinking and acting transnationally is likely (or unlikely) to advance corporate accountability. 27 See Bob (2005); Hersford and Kozol (2002); Dale (2013). R. Grosescu and J. G. Dale 15 References Baars G (2019) The corporation, law and capitalism. A radical perspective on the role of law. Brill, Leiden Block F (2018) Capitalism: the future of an illusion. University of California Press, Los Angeles Blowfield M, Frynas JG (2005) Critical perspective on corporate social responsibility. Spec Iss Int Aff 81(3):499 Bob C (2005) The marketing of rebellion: insurgents, media and international activism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Bob C (2012) What issues rouse global civil society? In: Moksnes H, Melin M (eds) Global civil society: Shifting powers in a shifting world. Uppsala Centre for Sustainable Development, pp83–89 Bueckert M (2019) Boycotts and revolution: debating the legitimacy of the African National Congress in the Canadian anti-apartheid movement, 1969–94. Radic Hist Rev 134:96–115 Černič JL (2019) Corporate accountability under socio-economic rights. Routledge, London Černič JL, Carrillo-Santarelli N (2018) The future of business and human rights. Theoretical and practical consideration for a UN treaty. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Crawford K (2021) Atlas of AI: power, politics, and the planetary costs of artificial intelligence. Yale University Press Dale JG (2011) Free Burma: transnational legal action and corporate accountability. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis Dale JG (2013) Review of internal affairs: how the structure of NGOs transforms human rights by Wendy H.Wong. Am J Sociol 119(3):875–877 Dale JG, Kislenko I (2022) Invitation to transnational sociology. In: Muschert G, Budd K, Dillaway H, Lane D, Nair M, Smith J (eds) Global agenda for social justice, vol 2. Policy Press, Bristol, pp109–119 Dale JG, Samara TR (2008) Legal pluralism within a transnational network of governance: the extraordinary case of rendition. Law Soc Just Glob Dev 12(2):1–19 De Búrca G (2021) Reframing human rights in a turbulent era. Oxford University Press, Oxford de Sousa Santos B (2007) Another knowledge is possible: beyond northern epistemologies. Verso, London de Sousa Santos BS (2015) Epistemologies of the south: justice against epistemicide. Routledge, London de Sousa Santos B, Rodriguez-Garavito CA (2005) Law and globalization from below. Towards a cosmopolitan legality. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Deva S, Bilchitz D (2017) Building a treaty on business and human rights. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Freeman D (2024) Sovereignty, human rights and the regulation of transnational corporations: a critical spatial analysis of civil society proposals for a binding treaty. Globalizations 21(1):1–19 García Martín L (2020) Transitional justice, corporate accountability and socio-economic rights. Lessons from Argentina. Routledge, London George E (2021) Incorporating rights. Strategies to advance corporate accountability. Oxford University Press, Oxford Gill L (2009) The limits of solidarity: labor and transnational organizing against Coca-Cola. Am Ethnol 36(4):667–680 Goodale M (2022) Reinventing human rights. Stanford University Press, Palo Alto Grosescu R (2019) Transnational advocacy networks and corporate accountability for gross human rights violations in Argentina and Colombia. Glob Soc 33(3):400–418 Grosescu R (2024) Justice and memory after dictatorship. Latin America, Central Eastern Europe, and the fragmentation of international criminal law. Oxford University Press, Oxford Hadden J (2015) Networks in contention: the divisive politics of climate change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Introduction: Re-Envisioning Corporate Accountability for Human Rights Abuses. Civil… 23 uneven political contention. In does so by examining two of the largest, transnationally active and influential networks involved in corporate accountability: the Global Campaign to Reclaim Peoples’ Sovereignty, Dismantle Corporate Power and Stop Impunity (Global Campaign); and the International Network for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR-Net). Encompassing more than 500 member organisations, these movements bring together a diverse range of local, national, and global actors consisting of transnational social movements, peasants and indigenous groups, trade unions, and local and international human rights NGOs. These TANs have mobilised political and legal strategies for corporate accountability at local, regional, and international scales, and notably, they are the only networks to have submitted their own proposals to the UN for a treaty on business and human rights. Both networks are ardent advocates of the adoption of such an international legally binding instrument, and some of their constituent members are part of both organisations. However, ESCR-Net and Global Campaign reveal important differences in terms of historical and political culture, membership, and funding, which also impact their visions of corporate accountability. Since human rights law does not yet directly legally bind TNCs, a key normative objective of the proposed treaty is to establish obligations for businesses within international human rights law. However, the nature and extent of the obligations often give rise to divergent visions regarding the degree of regulation and the nature of enforcement mechanisms. As explored later in the chapter, these divisions are not solely of a technical nature. Rather, they reveal underlying ideological and political rifts, as well as differing historical and organisational time frames. The chapter argues that political differences and expectations, whether overt or subtle, alongside diverse cultural and historical formations, and competing ideological and legal perspectives on the scope and nature of human rights, are just as important as the joint efforts of Global Campaign and ESCR-Net to advance the adoption of the UN Treaty. It further contends that these networks, given their positioning in the socio-legal debate on the politics of rights and engagement with global legal and economic structures, perpetuate the cleavage between the liberal type of civil society (ESCR-Net) and the counter-hegemonic type (Global Campaign). Unlike the former, the latter regards legality as attuned to the dynamic political struggle for social justice and upholds a more collectivist vision of (human) rights as an expression of popular sovereignty and peoples’ right to self-determination.7 The formulation of sovereignty is key to devising international law to regulate TNCs. As other authors have argued, Global Campaign’s aim is to create a “global sovereignty”, in which “sovereignty is vertically displaced upwards to a global level and downwards to the people” and thus establish an emancipatory universal politicoeconomic order that would enable both the regulation of TNCs and the effective protection of the human rights of people and peoples.8 The more liberal-oriented activist stream, represented by ESCR-Net, does not overtly politicise either the dominant economic model of neoliberal globalisation nor its political embodiment, 7 Santos and Rodríguez-Garavito (2005), pp.15–16; Brennan and Berrón (2020). 8 Freeman (2024), p.2. “A World Where There Are Many Worlds.” Fragmentation of Civil Society Advocacy… 24 liberal democracy. Although it includes some organisations with anti-neoliberal credentials, ESCR-Net remains largely anchored in the human rights framework that primarily addresses the negative consequences and human rights abuses stemming from the workings of global economy. In contrast to Global Campaign, ESCR-Net stands for extending horizontally the sovereignty of Northen states into the territories of the Southern states in order to protect human rights in the latter. It is what Freedman has called “imperial sovereignty”, a conceptual framework grounded in the imperial spatiality of the Western-inspired human rights regime which, despite its support for TNCs regulation, does not challenge the Global North’s “imperial spatial order”.9 Comparing such contexts, ideas, and different visions of activism is key to understanding these TANs and their approaches to corporate accountability. Yet, in doing so, we must avoid conflating affinities with identities, and differences with animosities. To capture the political vocabulary and legal language in relation to the UN Treaty, this chapter compares the two networks in terms of what each identifies as their three major points of contention. First, there is the “depth” question of the UN Treaty (or ratione personae), which pertains to the types of business enterprises that should be subject to the Treaty. Second, the “breadth” question (ratione materiae), concerns the kinds of human rights that should be encompassed by the Treaty and the ways that corporate responsibility with to respect human rights can be operationalised. The third contentious issue pertains to mechanisms designed to offer justice and remedy to affected people and communities in the event that the Treaty is adopted. My analysis combines discourse analysis of various written sources—including official submissions to the UN, reports, press releases, newsletters, advocacy and policy papers, and the proposal drafted by the networks themselves for a UN Treaty—and direct observation conducted at the 2022 session of the UN Business and Human Rights Forum, the 2023 session of the open-ended inter-governmental working group on TNCs and other business enterprises with respect to human rights, and during field research in South Africa in September 2023. I have also conducted over ten interviews with representatives of various organisational members of the two networks, which allowed to better make sense of internal dynamics and personal assessments of various discourses surrounding the Treaty process. 2 The Challenges ofanEntrenched Neoliberal Orthodoxy ofHuman Rights International organisations, governments, CSOs, and business associations, all agree on the necessity of managing the adverse impacts of corporate activities on human rights and state governance. However, there is discord regarding the approach required to achieve this goal. The main point of contention revolves around whether 9 Ibid. A. Chiorean 25 the governance of corporate behaviour leading to human rights violations should be addressed through a binding UN treaty in the area of business and human rights or through soft-law (voluntary) instruments. The latter approach has been favoured by the states of the Global North, while the consensus among the states of the Global South is towards the former. The disagreement over the legal nature of obligations is thus grounded in broader political divisions along the North-South axis, including competing visions of the global environment of capitalism, economic development, issues of national sovereignty, corporate responsibility, and beliefs about the role of the state in socioeconomic development.10 This political polarisation has also significantly influenced regulatory initiatives related to business and human rights at the UN level during the last half century. The most recent initiative—the ongoing negotiations for a UN Treaty on Business and Human Rights—was sparked by a resolution tabled by Ecuador and South Africa, co-sponsored by Bolivia, Cuba, and Venezuela, and adopted by the UN Human Rights Council on 26 June 2014 (Resolution 26/9). Robust backing for the Resolution also came from a large-scale global campaign led by civil society advocating for corporate accountability. For instance, the Treaty Alliance, a global network bringing together more than 600 CSOs, some of whom were involved in previous attempts at the UN to regulate TNCs, was formed in 2012 to support the adoption of Resolution 26/9.11 By highlighting the struggles of victims in holding TNCs accountable for human rights violations, the Alliance played a pivotal role in both exposing the limitations of previously voluntary UN initiatives in terms of business and human rights, and rallying state support for a binding international instrument. In response to the adoption of the Resolution, in 2014, the UN Human Rights Council established an open-ended intergovernmental working group (OEIWG) to develop proposals to move forward inter-state negotiations for the achievement of a legally binding instrument to regulate the activities of TNCs.12 The political environment was favourable for the adoption of the Resolution and the creation of the OEIWG.The rise of the so-called “pink tide” of left-wing governments in the 2000s resurrected debates about the meaning of democracy and economic justice in Latin America. In terms of economic and diplomatic policies, “pink tide” governments were, to a large extent, a reaction to the state corporatisation accelerated by the “Washington Consensus” policies of unchained free 10 Throughout the chapter the distinction between Global North and Global South is understood as dynamic rather than static. I use Global South in a broader sense, not strictly confined to its geographical connotations, but rather to encompass various forms of economic subordination associated with neoliberal globalisation. See de Sousa Santos (2005). 11 See https://www.treatymovement.com (accessed 28.07.2024). 12 Resolution 26/9 established an open-ended inter-governmental working group (OEIWG) to “elaborate an internationally legally binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activity of transnational corporations and other business enterprises.” See UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Resolution 26/9 Elaboration of an International Legally Binding Instrument on Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Respect to Human Rights (26 June 2014) UN Doc A/HRC/RES/26/9. “A World Where There Are Many Worlds.” Fragmentation of Civil Society Advocacy… 26 markets, the elimination of trade barriers, privatisation and economic deregularisation.13 Such policies changed the structure of the state, trapped Latin American countries in asymmetrical free trade agreements with the United States and spearheaded the extractivist model.14 As a general trend, these governments aspired to reconfigure national economies through reforms aimed at correcting the effects of the markets, redistributing national wealth and assuming control over key economic sectors.15 The 2008 global financial crisis further spotlighted how national economic policies were subordinated to clusters of financial institutions and TNCs.16 Against this political and economic backdrop, and influenced by Ecuador’s longstanding case against Texaco-Chevron regarding the environmental damage sustained during the company’s oil exploitation in the Amazon,17 the left-leaning government of Rafael Correa sponsored the UN Resolution with the goal to create a binding instrument to regulate TNCs under international human rights law. The resolution came up against UN’s “new regulatory dynamic”, a “smart mix” of (mainly) voluntary and mandatory measures in the field business and human rights that aimed to foster a better alignment between public and private governance systems.18 In the aftermath of the Cold War, the UN had shifted toward a model of “polycentric governance” based on the premise that states alone could no longer adequately address their diverse societal needs. Thus, constructing a framework for business and human rights relied on “informal cooperation”, “public-private partnerships”, and “multistakeholder processes”.19 This approach led to the emergence of soft-law initiatives such as the Global Compact (2000) and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (2011), which were focused on flexible approaches to gaining the commitment of businesses to human rights obligations without, however, imposing binding norms. The adoption of UN Resolution 26/9 brought new hope for a shift in this voluntary regime. Yet, despite the extensive support from CSOs and the mobilisation of countries from the Global South, the Treaty proposal was divisive from the outset.20 13 Gold and Zagato (2020), pp.7–8. 14 Gills (2023); Chagnon etal. (2022); Gudynas (2018); Martín (2017). 15 Buono and Lara (2007). 16 Tooze (2008), p.346. 17 Pellegrini etal. (2020). 18 Ruggie (2014), pp.6–8. 19 Ruggie (2015). 20 Of the 47 member states of the Human Rights Council, the resolution was supported by 20 (Algeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, China, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Cuba, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Morocco, Namibia, Pakistan, Philippines, Russia, South Africa, Venezuela, and Vietnam) and opposed by 14 (Austria, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Montenegro, South Korea, Romania, Macedonia, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America). 13 member states abstained (Argentina, Botswana, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Gabon, Kuwait, Maldives, Mexico, Peru, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, and the United Arab Emirates). A. Chiorean 27 States from the Global North, aligned with influential corporate entities, opposed the idea of a binding treaty, thereby reaffirming their commitment to a governance framework reliant on existing voluntary initiatives.21 Global North states and business actors also worried that the Treaty proposal might revive the 2003 proposal submitted by the UN Working Group on the Working Methods and Activities of the TNCs (known as UN Draft Norms), which imposed positive obligations on companies regarding the realisation of human rights, meaning that companies not only had to respect human rights, but were also obligated to promote such rights and refrain from any direct or indirect contribution to, or benefit from, human rights violations.22 For some, the Treaty proposal signalled a potential attempt to revisit the protracted debates of the 1970s and 1980s, during which the regulation of TNCs featured prominently in the New International Economic Order (NIEO) programme for reorganising the postcolonial economic order.23 Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1974, the NIEO declaration envisaged an international economic order that would correct global inequalities and redress the injustices of the postcolonial economic order through effective control over natural resources, debt forgiveness, fair commodity prices, technology transfers, and the regulation of TNCs.24 As some scholars have noted, the strident defence of the sovereignty of newly independent states placed the project in direct opposition to the new human rights movement of the time.25 While the latter was focused on individual rights, the NIEO inspired a vision of freedom and rights of individual citizens that derived from national independence and “equal state sovereignty”.26 It privileged collective rights, the rights of states and peoples, and the right to permanent sovereignty over natural resources as a complement to the political right to self-determination.27 21 These initiatives comprise the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (1976), the ILO tripartite Declaration of Principles Concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policies (1977), the United Nations Global Compact (2000), and the United Nations Guiding Principles (2011). 22 See Surya Deva (2021), pp.149–151. 23 Between 1977 and 1990, negotiations for a draft Code containing standards for corporate conduct occurred that covered a broad array of government-TNCs relations: respect for national sovereignty, non-interference in internal political affairs, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. However, as the ideological climate became more radicalised in developed countries (unchaining free-marketisation) and the Soviet-led camp disintegrated, negotiations cooled. The pivot by developing countries towards attracting foreign investment and the proliferation of bilateral investment agreements also moved the focus from investor responsibility to investor protection. Negotiations for the Draft Code were thus abandoned in 1992. See Sauvant (2015) and Hamdani and Ruffing (2017). 24 United Nations General Assembly (1974). 25 Whyte (2018), p.174. 26 Freeman (2024), p.7. 27 Ishay (2008), Ch. 4; and contra, Moyn (2010). “A World Where There Are Many Worlds.” Fragmentation of Civil Society Advocacy… 28 Indeed, there was no mention of human rights, but an emphasis on the reform of the international trading and investment law regimes.28 Both the aforementioned initiatives ultimately failed due to staunch opposition from Global North states and corporations, or were rendered obsolete by unfavourable political and economic timing and legal uncertainties surrounding subjecting companies to norms usually demanded of the state.29 Contemporary human rights law is focused, largely, on the same legal regimes—in trade, investment, and finance—that the NIEO contested.30 Yet, unlike the NIEO, dominant human rights activism does not seek to radically alter these regimes, but only to mitigate certain damaging aspects of their functioning. As will be seen later in this chapter, the challenge of how to adapt human rights law to provide a mechanism for global redistribution, also challenges any collaboration between the largest civil society networks supporting the UN Treaty. Thus far, scholarly research on the Treaty process has primarily centred either on normative issues—the normative potential, contribution, and impact of the Treaty on the international regulatory framework31—or on descriptive questions pertaining to the development of the drafts during the annual and inter-sessional negotiations of the OEIWG.32 An examination of how various CSOs imagined different normative aspects of the Treaty according to their own political and ideological perspectives is still largely missing. The lack of such analysis can partially be explained by the formation of the Treaty Alliance, a large heterogenous alliance of CSOs that in many regards is the driving force behind the Treaty process. The Alliance was formed by Global Campaign, a network grounded in social movements, alongside other human rights NGOs, mainly from the Global North, most prominent among them being ESCR-Net, and For the Right of Food and Nutrition International (FIAN).33 In addition, transnational coalitions such as the Global Interparliamentary Network, Feminists for a Binding Treaty, and the International Federation for Human Rights later joined the Treaty Alliance. The coalition publicly asserted itself as a “space for convergence of organisations and movements”, a tactical alliance to advance international law in terms of business and human rights.34 Its objective was not to eliminate the differences between various groups, whether material or normative, but to adopt an approach that fostered flexibility and created opportunities for individual members to pursue their agendas. Consequently, the Alliance endeavoured to mediate the diverse ideological nuances and political differences of its members.35 28 Anghie (2019), pp.435–438. 29 de Schutter (2015). See also Bilchitz (2017), pp.191–92. 30 Anghie (2019), p.438. 31 Bilchitz (2016) 32 Bantekas (2021). 33 Personal interview with Gonzalo Berrón, 19.02.2024 (online). 34 Suárez Franco and Fyfe (2018), p.157; Civicus (2017). 35 Suárez Franco and Fyfe (2018), p.148. A. Chiorean 29 Although the Alliance is united in advancing the Treaty process, its member organisations are far from embodying a unified front about its form and the content. According to one activist I interviewed in 2024, “we [Global Campaign], the International Commission of Jurists, FIAN, and ESCR-Net, attempted to establish a common political and ideological position but it was so problematic that at one point I just said: Why don’t we give up on the Treaty Alliance? All these tensions just divide us!”36 Another activist from Global Campaign confirmed to me that the political cleavages between Global Campaign and human rights-oriented organisations led to the recalibration of the Treaty Alliance as a forum for information exchange and analysis only. In his words, the Treaty Alliance is “only process oriented, but not content oriented … there is no consensus on content issues, indeed the only issue we came together on was that we need to protect the Treaty process”.37 Consequently, the consensus among the members of the Alliance is that common statements on content issues related to the Treaty are impossible. Some activists from Global Campaign believe that the Alliance invariably tried to pressure them to water down their more radical demands,38 but also concede that “occasionally our fellow members in the Alliance were subjected to the heat of the political discourse of our most radical members, but this is because the human rights NGOs are hesitant to challenge the entrenched orthodoxy of human rights”.39 3 Global Campaign andESCR-Net: Institutional Background andHistorical Linkages 3.1 Global Campaign andtheRadical Reformulation ofanEmancipatory Legal Framework Established in 2012 as a coalition of social movements, CSOs, trade unions, environmental NGOs, human rights advocates, citizens groups, women’s groups, and other militant groups based mainly in Latin America, Global Campaign emerged from a frustration with the profound inequality, human rights violations, economic dispossession and environmental destruction brought about by the acceleration of neoliberal globalisation since the 1990s.40 However, its political and organisational roots run deeper. The trade integration policies established in the Americas during the 1990s and 2000s, such as the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), represented some of the most 36 Personal interview with Gonzalo Berrón, 19.02.2024 (online). 37 Personal interview with Alberto Villarreal, 02.04.20024 (online). 38 Ibid. 39 Personal interview with Gonzalo Berrón, 19.02.2024 (online). 40 Goodman (2002); Scholte (2002); O’Brien etal. (2000). “A World Where There Are Many Worlds.” Fragmentation of Civil Society Advocacy… 30 ambitious trade integration efforts ever undertaken.41 Nevertheless, the social and environmental costs of these neoliberal models of regional trade were severe. The new forms of governance that emerged exacerbated regional socioeconomic disparities, weakened public mechanisms to address social and economic exclusion, and, overall, diminished citizen participation in public policy.42 Trade-related issues became arenas of contestation between formal representative democracy and more grassroots forms of citizen participation. It was against this backdrop that social movements across Latin America joined forces to establish the broad, crosssectorial, Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA) in 1997.43 The movement represented a transnational collaboration of social movements, trade unions, NGOs, indigenous groups, and advocacy groups from across the continent to oppose the advancement of the neoliberal agenda of the FTAA.44 Through transnational organising and, the HSA connected resistance efforts with the development of alternatives to neoliberal economic globalisation from below.45 Subsequently, the network expanded its scope with the formation of the EuropeLatin America and the Caribbean bi-regional network Enlazando Alternativas (EA), which brought together activists from Latin America and Europe through a partnership with the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute. The EA’s strategies centred on empirically documenting the abuses of Western TNCs and the resistance experiences of the victims of these abuses. The alliance not only sought to develop a critique of neo-liberal economic globalization from a Latin American standpoint, but also attempted to imagine an alternative vision of the world. By challenging the prevailing political and ideological frameworks embedded in the economic and human rights discourse (the “market-friendly” vision of human rights),46 EA aimed to articulate a transnational space that provided venues for a re-politicised perspective of the law more attuned to social justice.47 In the absence of legal mechanisms compelling TNCs to uphold the rights of the people, EA also accommodated new avenues for debate and public engagement by reimagining legal institutions from below such as the Permanent People’s Tribunals (PPT), Peoples Summits and Social Forums. They understood that despite its limited individualistic focus, human rights law could advance social welfare at the national level and that governments had the duty to protect and promote it. Yet, similar to Marxist critics of human rights who argue that abstract equality and 41 Salazar-Xirinachs and Maryse (2001). 42 Gallagher (2005); Anderson and Arruda (2002). 43 Saguier (2007), pp.251–65. 44 Ibid. 45 The HSA’s policy document centres on the premise that the people should have a voice in deciding the future of regional integration. In addition, labour and environmental rights were seen as key to any economic agreement, whilst the protection of key sectors such as food production had to be guaranteed by the state in order to ensure the rights and well-being of the people. See HSA,Alternative for the Americas (2002). 46 Whyte (2018), p.239. 47 Icaza etal. (2009), pp.9–11. A. Chiorean 31 freedom only obscure substantive domination and inequality, EA activists rejected the political sovereignty imposed by such unequal relations of economic domination. A broader focus on people’s economic and environmental rights would thus also revise and transform the language of human rights. By holding the PPT, the EA (and later Global Campaign) promoted a tradition of peoples’ tribunals, building on a version of human rights anchored in decolonisation and concern for its of neocolonial and imperialist reverberations. It aimed to bridge the gap between international law and human rights violations by emphasising collective rights, in the form of economic and environmental rights, and the right to self-determination.48 The goal of the PPT was to expose violations of internationally recognised rights, as well as the failure of TNCs to comply even with established voluntary UN mechanisms. During its hearing sessions in Vienna (2006,) Lima (2008), Madrid (2010), South Africa (2016–18), the PPT identified, analysed and condemned the activities of TNCs in various sectors, including finance, agrobusiness, extractive industries, and infrastructure.49 For instance, the Madrid session, which built on cases presented in Vienna and Lima, affirmed the “persistence of systematic violations of fundamental rights by European TNCs in Latin America”, which demonstrated that “a regime of widespread permissiveness, unlawfulness and impunity exists and is manifested, in the behaviour of European TNCs in Latin America”.50 In the final judgement of the Madrid session, the Tribunal resolved to morally sanction and denounce in the international arena the political, economic, financial, productive and judicial conduct and practices of the neoliberal model, promoted and developed by the most industrialised States and international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation which, under the aegis of promoting growth and economic development to combat poverty and achieve sustainable development, are the cause of the increase in inequalities between a powerful minority and an extraordinary majority who suffer the adverse consequences of globalisation.51 At the same time, it acknowledged the right of communities, Indigenous people, and all victims of the “development model imposed by TNCs” to resist and organise in defence of their territory, culture, and self-determination.52 The PPT also formulated recommendations for regulating the political influence of corporations and their pursuit of profit. Additionally, drawing on the NIEO’s legacy, it proposed the establishment of new international mechanisms, including an International Economic Tribunal to 48 The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal was established in 1979in Bologna and was based on a conceptual militant-utopian vision of international law as a tool of liberation and an enabler of a dignified life. Yet, its origins go back to the two Russell Tribunals, the first of which (1966–67) investigated the crimes of aggression and war crimes perpetrated by the United Sates during the invasion of Vietnam, whilst the second considered the Latin American dictatorships. See Tognoni (2018), p.42. 49 See https://permanentpeoplestribunal.org/?lang=en 50 Permanent Peoples Tribunal (2010), p.11. 51 Ibid., p.23. 52 Ibid., p.24. “A World Where There Are Many Worlds.” Fragmentation of Civil Society Advocacy… 32 address economic and environmental crimes committed by TNCs, the creation of a Centre on Transnational Corporations within the UN,53 and measures to protect against extraterritorial human rights abuses by TNCs.54 By highlighting the centrality of the people as active subjects capable of advocating for truth and justice, popular tribunals served as a platform to explore avenues for shaping a legislative process that was responsive to and driven by the people.55 Their aim was to cultivate peoplecentred transnational legal, social, and political strategies of resistance to neoliberalism, while also enhancing and adapting the exiting framework of international law for a “post-neoliberal system”.56 The establishment of Global Campaign in Rio de Janeiro in 2012 incorporated this tradition of resistance into a more global project, serving as evidence for the evolving organisation of the counter-hegemonic movement worldwide.57 With a foothold in Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, Global Campaign currently represents a network of over 250 movements, social organisations, and trade unions that aim to “resist land grabs, extractive mining, exploitative wages and environmental destruction caused by TNCs globally”.58 Prominent members include international networks such as La Via Campesina, the Transnational Institute, Friends of the Earth, Amigos de la Tierra América Latina y el Caribe (ATALC), Jubilee South, Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens (Movement of People Affected by Dams), FIAN International, and national networks such as Centre Europe Tiers Monde (CETIM), AIDC South Africa, and the Instituto de Direitos Humanos e Empresas (Homa) Brazil.59 In contrast to existing neo-liberal globalisation projects, the counter-hegemonic globalisation agenda articulated by Global Campaign is characterised by a redistributive ethos that encompasses material, cultural, political, and social dimensions. It embodies a struggle against social exclusion, infused with a radical utopianism.60 It is a political project rooted in the belief that hegemonic economic and legal realities can be challenged and transformed through alternative conceptions of law and politics. An illustration of this approach is seen in the International Peoples Treaty on the Control of TNCs (hereafter Peoples Treaty), the Global Campaign’s proposal for a legally binding instrument to address human rights violations committed by TNCs, submitted to UN in 2014.61 53 The UN Centre on Transnational Corporations was established in 1975 and abolished in 1992. See Hamdani and Ruffing (2015). 54 Transnational Institute and Enzalando Alternativas (2010). 55 Fraudatario and Tognoni (2018), pp.134–35. 56 Enlazando Alternativas (2009). 57 Ibid. 58 See https://www.stopcorporateimpunity.org/call-to-international-action/ (last accessed 07 May 2023). 59 Global Campaign (2012). 60 de Sousa Santos (2005), pp.30–31. 61 Global Campaign (2016). A. Chiorean 39 inefficient.85 These points align with the economic concerns voiced by states from the Global South, who expressed apprehension that, if the Treaty were to apply to all types of business enterprises, their local and small-scale companies could face significant burdens resulting from international human rights norms.86 The political shifts in Ecuador (the key driver of the Treaty process since 2013)— marked by the ascension of Lenin Moreno to power in 2017, followed by conservative billionaire banker Guillermo Lasso in 2021—significantly altered the power dynamics of the negotiations. While outgoing President Rafael Correa steered Ecuador away from political and economic alignment with the United States between 2007 and 2017, his successors reinstated many neoliberal policies in an attempt to re-connect the country with the US regional interests. This change in Ecuador’s foreign policy orientation was reflected in the draft treaties presented during the negotiations. The new Ecuadorian ambassadors at the UN, who also served as chairperson rapporteurs to the OEIWG, diluted the language of previous drafts to accommodate many of the demands of Global North countries, such as expanding the scope of the Treaty. Although, beginning with the first revised draft in 2018, the scope of the Treaty was expanded to include all business enterprises, civil society remained divided on this issue. 4.2 The “Breadth” Question Until 2023, the Treaty’s possible “breadth” also remained a highly contentious question. Two models have emerged: the “indirect” model, which focuses on the state’s role in protecting individuals from human rights violations through the international legal obligation to ensure that corporations do not violate human rights, and the “direct” model, which would impose obligations on corporations through international law.87 The indirect approach would thus absolve corporations of any direct obligations related to international human rights law. Relying solely on states to uphold these obligations may not be sufficient, since many states lack the political will and institutional capacities to effectively regulate corporate behaviour. Additionally, some states may face economic dependencies that limit their ability to enforce human rights standards within their jurisdictions.88 Global Campaign has been at the forefront of advocating for the inclusion of direct obligations for businesses as legal persons under the UN Treaty, a position supported by several states from the Global South, including the African Group, Cuba, Bolivia, Colombia, Pakistan, and Indonesia. According to them, the inclusion of direct obligations for TNCs under international law is crucial for addressing the 85 Global Campaign (2023). 86 Deva (2017), pp.167–68. 87 Bilchitz (2017), p.186. 88 Ibid. “A World Where There Are Many Worlds.” Fragmentation of Civil Society Advocacy… 40 legal gap and subsequent impunity generated by the multi-jurisdictional nature of their activity. Their proposed approach entails a dual model: a “vertical” direct application for states that imposes an obligation to take measures to protect human rights, and a “horizontal” application for TNCs, obligating them to refrain from violating human rights during their business operations.89 This framework thus aims to establish clear responsibilities for both states and corporations, ensuring accountability for human rights violations within their respective spheres of influence. Although the direct model proposed for a business and human rights treaty diverges from the current international law paradigm, it offers several advantages. Firstly, it acknowledges that states alone are not solely responsible for upholding fundamental rights. Given the limitations of states in effectively regulating corporations, direct obligations for corporations ensure that their failure to fulfil these obligations can be addressed even without state intervention. This could result in consequences such as reputational harm, extraterritorial litigation, and international accountability if appropriate forums are established. However, implementing direct obligations for corporations would require the treaty to establish structures to define the nature and extent of these obligations. Moreover, this approach is likely to face opposition from businesses and powerful states aiming to safeguard corporate interests. Additionally, some states may attempt to evade their own responsibilities by shifting the focus onto corporations. Furthermore, establishing direct obligations for corporations would necessitate the creation of an international mechanism to provide access to remedies. The effectiveness of such a mechanism would, in turn, rely on the cooperation and efficiency of national mechanisms.90 In contrast, ESCR-Net tends to advocate for an “indirect approach”, wherein only states are bound by human rights obligations. Under this model, businesses have no direct obligations under international human rights treaties, but states are responsible for implementing measures that impose obligations on businesses. In this framework, states would be tasked with ensuring the effectiveness of any international direct obligations resulting from a UN Treaty. However, this approach also has its drawbacks. States may lack the capacity or willingness to effectively regulate powerful corporate interests. Major corporations may wield resources that surpass those of states, or they may exert influence over government officials. Additionally, this model allows corporations to argue that they bear no direct obligations regarding human rights, potentially undermining the universality of obligations placed on corporations. Different states may enact varying frameworks and obligations, leading to inconsistencies in corporate accountability for human rights violations. Indeed, these different lines of argumentation are deeply rooted in specific political and ideological trajectories. The Latin American experience of social struggle during the twentieth century, coupled with political legacy of the NIEO, have influenced the Global Campaign’s perspective, shaping its view of both the state as a 89 Europe-Third World Centre (2019). 90 Bilchitz (2016). Also undermining efforts to establish such national mechanisms is the transnational organisation of international commercial arbitration. See Dezalay and Bryant (1996). A. Chiorean 41 social relation, and of the relationship between democracy and territoriality. Despite its contradictions, the state is regarded as a significant battleground. In many (neo) liberal states, public law and public power are closely intertwined with private interests; there is therefore a pressing need to shift the focus from serving corporate interests to transforming the “public” realm into the “common” sphere. Global Campaign advocates for reclaiming the state from corporate capture, viewing this as essential for democracy. By realigning the state’s priorities away from serving corporate interests and toward promoting the common good, the aim is to establish a more democratic and equitable society. This perspective underscores the importance of challenging corporate influence over state institutions and policies to ensure that the state serves the interests of the people rather than those of powerful corporate entities.91 As such, in a dedicated section entitled “Obligations of Official International Economic and Financial Institutions Regarding Trade and Investment Agreements”, Global Campaign expands upon the regulatory framework proposed for any future Treaty. According to the network’s perspective, when participating in intergovernmental organisations, including economic and financial institutions, as well as free trade and investment agreements, states should adhere to the obligations established by the Treaty. This entails ensuring that such agreements do not contribute to the violation of human rights by TNCs.92 Furthermore, financial institutions and international financial institutions are expected not to finance TNCs and their supply chains if they are aware or should be aware that doing so would nullify or violate human rights. This comprehensive approach aims to hold both states and international institutions accountable for their roles in promoting or mitigating human rights violations resulting from trade and investment agreements.93 While ESCR-Net agreed with the overarching principle of prioritizing human rights, it also recognized the significant impact of trade and investment treaties negotiated both within and outside the framework of the World Trade Organisation on human rights.94 Their legal approach, however, emphasises the operationalization of corporate responsibility to respect human rights through a future Treaty, as outlined in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Under this framework, states are required to enact legislation that legally obliges corporations to undertake human rights due diligence. This entails the identification, prevention, and mitigation of—and accountability for—adverse human rights impacts in line with existing international standards. By integrating these requirements into national legislation, states can ensure that corporations are held accountable for their human rights impacts and take appropriate measures to address them.95 91 Global Campaign (2015). 92 Ibid. 93 Ibid. 94 ESCR-Net (2016b). 95 Ibid; United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner (2011). “A World Where There Are Many Worlds.” Fragmentation of Civil Society Advocacy… 42 4.3 The Enforcement Issue Even more contentious is the question of which entities, whether national or international, should ensure the implementation of the UN Treaty and enforce the stipulated obligations. In 2016, Luis Callegos, former Ecuadorian ambassador to the UN and Chair of the OEIWG, proposed the concept of a “World Court on Business and Human Rights”. Callegos sought to include the creation of a court as a “further measure against corporate impunity” in the draft of the UN Treaty.96 The ambassador’s proposal aligned closely with the Global Campaign’s suggestion for an “International Tribunal on TNCs and Human Rights”, which also found support among several states from the Global South. Global Campaign’s proposal envisioned an international tribunal operating under the principle of complementarity, akin to the structure of the International Criminal Court. This tribunal would be affiliated with the UN system and, ideally, be headquartered in a country from the Global South.97 This tribunal would have jurisdiction over TNCs as legal entities, regardless of the legal framework in the home or host country, or in the state where the violation occurred. In terms of the tribunal’s material jurisdiction, Global Campaign envisions its extension to the obligations of TNCs outlined in the future treaty. Regarding its geographic jurisdiction, the tribunal would be empowered to adjudicate violations occurring in a state party to the statute, even if the TNC involved is located in a non-party state, provided that a clear relationship between the TNC and the entity responsible for the violation can be established.98 Additional provisions place the burden of proof on the accused violators of human rights and establishes cost-free access to justice and legal counsel. While this provision may conflict with the principle of presumption of innocence, it has been advocated by numerous NGOs.99 The aim is to ensure a more equitable access to justice for victims of human rights violations who may lack sufficient resources.100 Moreover, Global Campaign proposed the establishment of an International Monitoring Centre on TNCs, operating under the auspices of the UN, envisioned as an inclusive social platform providing legal and psychological assistance to affected individuals and communities, as well as support for social movements and states in their quest for corporate accountability.101 Perhaps the most radical proposal put forth by Global Campaign, the establishment of an international tribunal is not supported by other members of the Treaty Alliance, including ESCR-Net. Instead, ESCR-Net emphasises the importance of 96 Gallegos and Uribe (2016). 97 Global Campaign (2022). 98 Ibid. 99 In France, for instance, Sherpa advocated for the inclusion of such a provision in the 2017 Due Diligence Law. The proposal was however rejected by Parliament as it was against the constitutional principle of the presumption of innocence. 100 See Sherpa (2022). 101 Global Campaign (2022). A. Chiorean 43 ensuring that states guarantee access to adequate, effective, and appropriate remedies for individuals affected by violations. From this perspective, the UN Treaty presents an opportunity to compel states to enact legislative, judicial, and other measures to ensure access to mechanisms for providing remedies. Indeed, beginning in 2017, the chairs of the Treaty process distanced themselves from the proposal for an international tribunal for TNCs and removed it from future drafts. In addition to the cost associated with establishing and maintaining an international tribunal, critics also highlight that such tribunals do not replace the role of the state. Even the International Criminal Court intervenes in a case only when a state is unwilling or unable to address it, and without state cooperation, no supranational court can effectively carry out its work or enforce its decisions.102 5 Conclusion The involvement of transnational advocacy networks in the process of drafting a UN Treaty on Business and Human Rights reveals the substantive disagreements between the networks on how to deal with corporate infringements on human rights. The chapter has argued that the political affinities and visions, historical experiences and modes of resistance to neoliberal globalisation, and national backgrounds of their membership, of each network have led to the differences in repertoire that are also reflected in their differing substantive orientations. Focusing on this contentious political territory provides a critical site for assessing current efforts to reconstruct global rules and institutions and, not least, de-territorialise the democratic experience. Although many view advocacy by civil society as a site of progressive democratic ideas, little attention has been paid to how each network views the relationship between democracy, human rights, and territoriality. Thus far, Global Campaign and ESCR-Net have succeeded in reconciling these political differences, largely due to the prevailing sense of inclusivity and respect for divergent opinions in pro-Treaty advocacy at the UN level. An important factor contributing to this convergence is the Treaty Alliance’s flexible and politically minimalist approach to collaboration on the UN Treaty. While cleavages have emerged over time, primarily in the form of tensions between North and South-centred approaches, they have not led to outright exclusions. Another factor that enhanced cooperation was the professionalisation among the activists, instilled by years of UN activism. Participation in UN proceedings necessitates the prioritization of legal knowledge, adherence to a proper dress code and a rigorous protocol for both formal and informal interactions. An activist from Global Campaign recalls, for instance, that before the vote on Resolution 26/9, “we had an advocacy bias– our tactics were outside tactics, not inside tactics. We did not want to change them. We did not know exactly what to do beyond denouncing corporate 102 Ibid. “A World Where There Are Many Worlds.” Fragmentation of Civil Society Advocacy… 44 power. Our people did not want to go to Geneva, but afterwards we tried to understand what a binding treaty meant”.103 Activists from ESCR-Net also acknowledge the influence of Global Campaign on their operations. Members who are part of the both networks have played a role in smoothing out certain political cleavages. For example, Movement of People Affected by Dams is active both in Global Campaign and ESCR-Net, and has been credited for its role in exposing the North-based network to more critical political economic perspectives.104 Ultimately, the campaign for the UN Treaty highlights two central features of corporate accountability within the context of neoliberal globalization. Firstly, it underscores the necessity for the continued combination of political and legal strategies, encompassing both protest and the mobilisation of dynamic legal instruments at local, regional, and global scales. Secondly, it illuminates how social movements can utilize the law to establish countervailing possibilities to liberal visions of regulations and human rights. Taken together, these findings suggest a reason to be hopeful about the possibilities of overcoming fragmentation within the corporate accountability movement. 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Verso, London “A World Where There Are Many Worlds.” Fragmentation of Civil Society Advocacy… 48 Andru Chiorean is a Researcher at the National School of Political Studies and Administration, Bucharest, in the ERC Project, “Transnational Advocacy Networks and Corporate Accountability for Major International Crimes.” His research interests focus on transnational/global history, political sociology, and corporate accountability. After defending his PhD in history at University of Nottingham in 2019, he held postdoctoral positions at the New Europe College Institute of Advanced Studies in Bucharest, the Research Institute of the University of Bucharest, the Wilson Center in Washington, DC, and the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. His work has been published in journals such as the European Review of History and in edited collections. He is currently investigating the role of transnational NGO coalitions and business associations in the production of corporate accountability international norms and regulations. Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ byncnd/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this license to share adapted material derived from this chapter or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. A. Chiorean 55 churches, politicians, or celebrities that serve as ambassadors for the cause.33 Further, they use similar tactics to communicate their mobilisation frames. Therefore, using social movement theory to analyse the universe of organisations active in the field of corporate accountability offers a sound theory-driven lens to study their mobilisation strategies, repertoires, and, in particular, their visions for their work and for society. For this purpose, we build on the “framing” perspective and repertoires of contention. As our analysis is dedicated to aspects that are either internal to, or directly mediated by the organisations, these two theoretical lenses enable us to conceptualize internal configurations of organisations, and, in particular, to analyse how the mobilisation frames impact the way these organisations struggle for holding corporations accountable. Claims and issues brought forth or fought against by SMOs and their leaders, as well as the existing opportunity structures, need to be framed in a way that mobilises people to join the cause.34 Framing in social movement studies thus describes the way in which social movements and movement organisations mobilise participants through the construction of mobilisation frames. Framing allows social movements to transform individual political orientations, values, and beliefs into collective action.35 Movements need to pay close attention to whether their constructed frames are in accordance with the audiences they target to ensure that individual preferences correspond to the movement’s goals, activities, and ideology.36 Movements also need to ensure that the activities they engage in are sanctioned by their activists and participants. This ‘frame resonance’, in Snow and Benford’s words, constitutes a deliberate compatibility between the preferences of the movement and those of activists, participants, and the targeted populations.37 Consequently, the framing approach allows us to conceptually disentangle and analyse the aim, ideology, and type of organisation. Repertoires of contention38 are the way social movements and other organisation make claims and, hence, how their frames are transformed into action. From a classical perspective, disruptive repertoires are distinguished from conventional means. However, advances in information and communication technology, as well as constant innovation by societal actors made a broader understanding of repertoires necessary. Apart from frame resonance, also the tactics and repertoires employed by social movements, or all other relevant organisations, have to be compatible. Therefore, radical frames often come with radical repertoires, but radical repertoires almost always come with radical frames. On the other hand, given the corporatisation of activism, softened frames often lead to soft forms of activism. 33 Reinecke and Donaghey (2015); Dale (2011); Keck and Sikkink (1998). 34 Benford and Snow (2000); Gamson and Meyer (1996). 35 Beck (2013). 36 Snow etal. (1986). 37 Snow and Benford (1988a); Snow and Benford (1988b). 38 Tilly (2008); Tilly and Tarrow (2006); Tilly (1986). Transnational Advocacy Networks and Corporate Accountability: Visions, Divisions… 56 Based on the scholarship presented above, I formulate a battery of three hypotheses. Informed by scholarship on global civil society, I expect to find a preponderance of organisations mobilising civil society repertoires over social movement specific repertoires (Hypothesis 1). Based on scholarship dedicated to the role civil society plays in the field of corporate accountability, I expect to find a preponderance of activities related to advocacy and information over contentious repertoires (Hypothesis 2). Drawing on social movement theory, I assume that the struggle to hold corporations accountable is, by its very nature, dominated by leftist or progressive frames (Hypothesis 3). 3 A Quantitative Approach tothePluriverse ofCorporate Accountability The data collection followed the approach of Action Organization Analysis (AOE),39 which has been successfully employed for data collection in multiple European projects (TransSOL, LIVEWHAT, EURYKA). AOE is an adaption of Protest Event Analysis that responds to the growing importance of the online sphere for civil society, that allows to map, sample, and code organisational data available on websites of organisations.40 AOE relies on hub websites identified by national teams. Here, I used a slightly adapted version of AOE, notably regarding the sampling. Inspired by data collection methods suitable for network analysis,41 I identified hub websites through the Global Civil Society Database.42 The database is compiled by the Union of International Associations (UIA), a Brussels-based non-profit research and documentation centre, mainly known for its reference work on international non-profit organisations, the Yearbook of International Organizations. Using the search routine “corporate accountability” and “corporate justice”, I found four hub websites43 (and hub-organisations). I followed Grant and Keohane’s broad definition of accountability as the right of some actors “to hold other actors to a set of standards, to judge whether they have fulfilled their responsibilities in light of these standards, and to impose sanctions if they determine that these responsibilities have not been met”.44 Hence, these two search terms were chosen to identify organisations and networks that strive to hold corporations accountable for wrongdoings (hence, mainly post facto) or that promote fair 39 Kousis etal. (2018). 40 Ibid., p.745. 41 Jones (2020); Hughes etal. (2018). 42 Union of International Associations (2022). 43 The four initial organisations are the following: African Coalition for Corporate Accountability; Corporate Accountability; European Coalition for Corporate Justice; International Corporate Accountability Roundtable. 44 Grant and Keohane’s (2005), p.29. H. P. Rammelt 57 Table 1 Distribution by region Region North America Europe Africa South America Asia Australia Count 81 78 65 17 13 1 Percentage 31.8 30.6 25.5 6.7 5.1 0.4 treatment of people by corporations, rather than focusing on voluntary efforts by corporations (such as corporate social responsibility). Subsequently, 195 links to partner organisations have been extracted from these hub websites. In a third step, the “about” sections of these partner websites have been scanned for references to corporate accountability and corporate justice. In a fourth step, links to partner websites from the websites that contained references to these terms were extracted, resulting in an additional 677 identified partners (see Table1). By so doing, a global universe of formal and informal organisations active in the field of corporate accountability was identified. The unit of analysis is, then, organisations (both formal and informal) active in the field of corporate accountability by striving to hold corporations accountable for wrongdoings or by enforcing and sanctioning fair treatment of individuals and groups affected by corporate actions. The link extraction resulted in a sample of 876 websites, as per three tiers (Graph 1), that allowed me to map and systematically analyse comparable cross-national data of a variety of types of organisations. Through this principle of data collection, biases created in methods based on the analysis of existing media content (such as Protest Event Analysis or Political Claims Analysis) could be limited by targeting the source rather than the representation. Consequently, the dataset is composed of an unmediated population of organisations that are both influential in the public discourse and informal, marginal or grassroots groups. Multiple pre-tests were performed which resulted in changes in the codebook, and an adapted sampling method. In a final step, a cleaned and randomised sample of organisational websites was coded. In total, 260 websites of organisations,45 groups, and networks were coded. Africa has become the epicentre of human rights problems resulting from corporate activities,46 while most TNCs are headquartered in Europe and North America. The dataset, although globally not representative due to the sampling based on the hub websites, provides a comprehensive exploratory sample of organisations located in these three world regions (Table1). The data was collected between October 2022 and March 2023 and, as such, provides a snapshot of the publicly available data at this moment. Both the database and the present analysis are the first sources providing quantitative data on the pluriverse of organisations active in the field of corporate accountability and examining the organisational field. Based on the theoretical framework presented in section one, I explore why and how organisations (both formal and informal) try to hold corporations accountable. 45 This is a sub-sample of the dataset created by the author, that, in its complete version includes 290 organisations (Rammelt 2024). 46 Olawuyi (2015). Transnational Advocacy Networks and Corporate Accountability: Visions, Divisions… 58 Given the aforementioned fragmentation of civil society active in the field of corporate accountability,47 my main focus is on internal factors, namely the repertoires and visions of organisations. To do so, I employ descriptive statistics to test the hypotheses based on the theoretical framework. The framing perspective informs our analysis of the type of organisation (variable ‘type of organisation primary’) and the three classic frames (variables ‘values’ for the motivational frame, ‘blame attribution’ for the diagnostic frame, and ‘proposed route’ for the prognostic frame). Additionally, descriptive statistics will reveal the trends in terms of funding sources (variable ‘funders’), collaborations (variable ‘partner organisations’), and on the interaction between different fields of activity (variable ‘type of organisation primary’ and ‘type of organisation secondary’). The diversity of repertoires will be assessed through activities listed on the organisations’ websites (variable ‘field of activity’). The merits of the method are important (data collection on a global network of organisations through desk research, easy and accessible codebook, and dataset, etc.); however, three points deserve attention. First, while the data grasp a single universe of organisations, other universes of organisations are active. The universe under analysis is the extended network of the four TANs that were identified through the Global Civil Society Database (Fig.1). The network and the extended network also only include partners that were mentioned or linked. It is worth noting that organisations collaborate with other groups, networks, and organisations that are not publicly acknowledged or discoverable online. This is probably not the case for donors, as most donors’ funding regulations require public acknowledgement. When trying to generalise the results of this study for the universe of organisations included in the dataset, one has to take into account that the sampling mechanism recreated a single universe of organisations. Other universes might have slightly different characteristics and a slightly different composition (also in region terms) of organisations. Secondly, quantifying data derived from qualitative analysis always implies a certain level of simplification. Subtle differences between organisations’ visions, interests, and goals can remain hidden. 47 Grosescu (2019). Tier I – Hubs 4 Organisations (Global Civil Society Database) Tier II – Network 195 Organisations/ Networks/ Groups Tier III – Extended Network 677 Organisations/ Networks/ Groups Fig. 1 Hubs and network H. P. Rammelt 59 Thirdly, organisations might describe their mission, vision, and their activities on their websites (e.g., to comply with funding requirements) in a certain way, while acting differently based on different motivations in reality. However, most of these limitations are to be encountered with other methods that are less comprehensive and that are affected by additional biases. 4 The Organisational Field inNumbers In this section, I present the descriptive findings. The visions of organisations, what we consider the motivational frame, active in the field are assessed through their postulated values (see Table2). “Ecology, environment, sustainability” is one of the main drivers of their activity, with 72.7% of websites referring to it. “Social justice”, a value associated with progressive and left-wing ideologies, is placed second (56.3%), followed by the more generic values of “human rights” (55.9%) and “democratic principles” (49.6%). Another rather progressive value, “solidarity”, is also a prominent reference (50.8%). A clear pattern emerges when looking at values that are more commonly associated with market-liberalism—“fairness” (14.1%), Table 2 Motivational Frame Values Count Percentage Diversity and Sustainability—Ecology, environment, sustainability 186 72.7 Rights Based—Social Justice 144 56.3 Rights Based—Human Rights 143 55.9 Humanitarian—Solidarity 130 50.8 Democratic Principles 127 49.6 Humanitarian—Truthfulness, honesty, and sincerity 114 44.5 Rights Based—Political Equality 108 42.2 Humanitarian—Dignity 97 37.9 Diversity and Sustainability—Respect for difference 87 34 Community and Order—Preserving existing (local) communities 46 18 Rights Based—Fairness 36 14.1 Economic Virtues—Prosperity 32 12.5 Economic Virtues—Professionalism 32 12.5 Religion—Christian Values 12 4.7 Economic Virtues—Competitiveness 8 3.1 Community and Order—Tradition 5 2 Religion—Interfaith 4 1.6 Transnational Advocacy Networks and Corporate Accountability: Visions, Divisions… 60 “prosperity” (12.5%), and “competitiveness” (3.1%) are far less frequently referred to than their progressive counterparts.48 In agreement with the mobilisation frame (Table 2), the diagnostic frame (Table3) displays a focus on blaming governments (78%) and companies (71%). The data shows a concurrence with regard to the institutions or actors responsible for social injustice and the construction of contemporary society, as Global North (27.6%), capitalist system (26.6%), and wealthy countries (21.5%) are in the second layer of blame attribution. The Poor (0%), General Population (1.3%) and Consumers (3.3%), broadly speaking, are at the bottom of the list of malefactors, showing the perception of civil society of individuals as subjects to corporate agendas and governments’ policy making. While the diagnostic frame constructed by organisations identifies the problem or delivers a definition of the evil in society, they also need to advance solutions or encourage the public by developing scenarios for success. Table4 summarises the prognostic frames. In first and fourth place, we find a preference for new domestic Legislation (59.2%) and New International Legislation (40.8%), and in second and third place, respectively, we find Collaborative efforts of Global Civil Society (53.7%) and Direct Intervention (45.1%). These latter two refer mostly to humanitarian aid and capacity building. Some (33%) see opportunities within the current legal framework or through the reinterpretation of existing laws (15.7%). The idea of voluntary principles (11.8%), strongly preferred and promoted by corporations themselves, is of limited influence in the universe of organisations included in the sample. A strong 33.3% of organisations believe the economic system should be reformed. 48 For a qualitative analysis of two major global coalitions for corporate accountability, including their political visions and repertoires of actions, see Andru Chiorean’s contribution in this volume. Table 3 Diagnostic Frame Blame Attribution Count Percentage Governments 168 78.5 Companies 152 71 Local Authorities 77 36 Politicians 63 29.4 The Rich 60 28 Global North 59 27.6 Capitalist System 57 26.6 International Regimes 54 25.2 Wealthy Countries 46 21.5 Greedy Company Personnel 39 18.2 Consumers 7 3.3 Global South 6 2.8 General Population 4 1.9 The Poor 0 0 H. P. Rammelt 61 Table 4 Prognostic Frame Proposed Route Count Percentage New domestic Legislation 151 59.2 Collaborative efforts of Global civil society 137 53.7 Direct Intervention 115 45.1 New International Legislation 104 40.8 Application of Existing Legislation 58 33.3 Reform the economic system 85 33.3 New International Regimes 55 21.6 Reinterpretation of existing law 40 15.7 Collaborative efforts of epistemic communities 31 12.2 Voluntary Principles 30 11.8 The findings concerning the field of activity and the tactics employed by organisations (Table5), are in agreement with their mobilisation frames. The ranking of their activities, however, is a little different. Organisations’ main activity is directed towards educating, informing, and empowering the general public, with the aim of mobilising public support. As such, we will find that raising awareness and providing information ranked first among their activities with 81.1%, and capacity building ranked third, with 58.3%. The second most common activity/strategy employed is directed towards authorities, lobbying and meetings with officials, scoring 62.9%. This Political/Advocacy activity shows their interest in garnering elite allies and influencing institutional actors through benign actions, making them more susceptible to incorporate the causes they advance. The collaborative component, networking (including federating national groups), with 47.5%, falls under the same logic. The watchdog role organisations have refers to documenting and making Human Rights Abuses public (51.4%) and counter-accounting other ways of gathering and spreading financial information on corporations (33.6%). The legal battle is another important arena for organisations in the field: 30.5% of organisations file complaints to relevant authorities, 32.4% provide legal assistance, 18.5% engage in litigation, and 9.3% (above our expectations) are active in prisoner support. Environmental activities constitute another pole of repertoires: Protection of the Environment (45.9%), fighting against extractive industries (24.7%), and alternative consumption or de-growth (20.8%) play an important role in the struggle against corporations. Although not as frequent, many organisations make use of social movement-related repertoires: Organising, or at least participating, in protests is an important element in terms of organisations activities (29.7%), organising or joining boycotts ranks second (20.8), followed by the more disruptive tactics of confrontational actions (12.4%) and occupations and blockades (10.8%). Externalising claims by addressing to international organisations and institutions (an avenue that requires a certain network position and access) is practised by 42.9%. As such, one can observe a Transnational Advocacy Networks and Corporate Accountability: Visions, Divisions… 62 Table 5 Field of Activity and Repertoire Field of Activity Count Percentage Education—Awareness raising and Providing Information 210 81.1 Political/ Advocacy—Lobbying and Meetings with Officials 163 62.9 Education—Capacity Building 151 58.3 Documentation—Documenting Human Rights Abuses 133 51.4 Networking (including federating national groups) 123 47.5 Environmental—Protection of the Environment 119 45.9 Political/ Advocacy—Addressing to International Organisations and Institutions 111 42.9 Political/Advocacy—Conventional 106 40.9 Documentation—Financial Reports on Corporations 87 33.6 Legal—Legal Support 84 32.4 Legal—Complaints to Relevant Authorities 79 30.5 Political/Advocacy—Demonstrative 77 29.7 Community Support—Mutual Aid and Aid to Victims 72 27.8 Environmental—Extractive Industries 64 24.7 International Cooperation 56 21.6 Environmental—Alternative Consumption or De-Growth 54 20.8 Political/ Advocacy—Boycott 54 20.8 Legal—Litigation 48 18.5 Economic—Financial Support and Fundraising 46 17.8 Basic/ Urgent Needs—Health care/ mental health 36 13.9 Political/ Advocacy—Confrontational 32 12.4 Political/ Advocacy—Occupations and Blockades 28 10.8 Support to Indigenous People 27 10.4 Basic/Urgent Needs—Clothes, Food, Shelter 24 9.3 Legal—Prisoner Support 24 9.3 Political/Advocacy—Electoral (e.g., mobilising people to vote) 22 8.5 Cultural/Artistic initiative 13 5 Economic—Shareholder Activism 10 3.9 Economic—Pro-Business 7 2.7 tendency to use non-disruptive repertoires in their fight to convince governments or corporations to incorporate their agenda or to mobilise the public. I was further interested in network embeddedness and availability of monetary resources: almost one-third of organisations (Table6) do not have funding or do not provide information on funding (which is a strong indicator for the lack of funding, given that most grants require public acknowledgement of funding). The same holds true for network embeddedness. However, the latter comes with a reservation that does not necessarily apply to funding: while organisations frequently and positively identify themselves with their network, if it involves highly visible NGOs for reputational benefits, it is possible that some of the organisations that do not list or mention partners actually do work with other organisations and benefit from expertise and exposure provided by others. Table 7 summarises funding sources of H. P. Rammelt 63 Table 6 Embeddedness and Resources Funding Partners yes, 68% 73% no, or not public 32% 27% Table 7 Funding Sources Funding Charities/ Philanthropies Donations Authorities Membership Fees Fundraising Services Count 145 143 83 45 41 36 Percentage 72.9 71.9 41.7 22.6 20.6 18.1 organisations included in the sample for which information on funding was available. They strongly rely on external funding, with less than a quarter of them being self-funded through fundraising (20.6%), membership fees (22.6%), or services (18.1%). Notably, membership fees and services (such as renting out spaces or selling beverages in self-managed locales) provide, at least partially, financial autonomy to organisations. Most organisations in the sample depend on funding through charities (72.9), donations (71.9%), and official funding by authorities (41.7%). The field of corporate accountability is predominantly populated by human rights (~30%) and environmental organisations (~10%). Table8 summarises the main types of organisations. Trade unions (3.5% and 0.5%) and organisations struggling for labour rights (1.2% and 4.1%) are much less frequent, which is surprising given that working conditions and slave labour are one of the more prominent anticorporate frames visible to the public (e.g., anti-sweatshop campaigns). Also, very few law firms (1.6% and 0.5%) are involved in the CA network under study. A higher percentage for lawyer associations (2.3% and 2.6%) indicate that when legal expertise is provided to the network it is either coming from specialised organisations or from lawyers that try to hold corporations accountable in their spare time. Humanitarian organisations, mainly providing disaster (including human-made, such as oil spills) and poor relief account for around 6% of the network. Many organisations act in a secondary capacity also as donors; more than 8% function on the secondary plan as charities or foundations, often granting micro-funding to smaller and often local initiatives. Epistemic communities account for a very small share of the sample (1.6% and 1%), leaving intellectual input and research expertise mainly to think tanks (8.6% and 10.4%). Less organised groups and networks such as protest groups (1.9% and 4.7%) and informal citizen groups (2.7% and 1%) indicate that the field is dominated by more structured and professional organisations to the detriment of networks that could be considered the primary suppliers of opportunities for unconventional political participation. Transnational Advocacy Networks and Corporate Accountability: Visions, Divisions… 64 Table 8 Type of Organisation Type of Organisation PRIMARY Type of Organisation SECONDARY Count Percentage Count Percentage Political—Civil/ human rights group 93 36.2 58 30.1 Political—Environmental group 28 10.9 22 11.4 Political—Protest Group 5 1.9 9 4.7 Political—Labour Rights 3 1.2 8 4.1 Professional Organisations—Unions/Labour organisations 9 3.5 1 0.5 Professional Organisations—Researchers, Academics, Intellectuals 4 1.6 2 1 Professional Organisations—Lawyer Associations 6 2.3 5 2.6 Law Firm 4 1.6 1 0.5 (International) Platform/ Federation 24 9.3 6 3.1 Humanitarian Organisation 15 5.8 11 5.7 Charity/ Foundation 12 4.7 16 8.3 Think Tank 22 8.6 20 10.4 Informal Citizen Group (like NIMBY) 7 2.7 2 1 Information Platform 10 3.9 20 10.4 5 Visions, Divisions, Convergences intheOrganisational Field 5.1 Visions There is far less variety than expected in the values that organisations in our sample claim. Concern for individual and group wellbeing prevails over corporate and governmental economic imperatives. This is consistent with the prognostic frames that organisations in the field construct. Given that 26.6% of the organisations analysed blame capitalism, 33.3% want to reform the economic system, and social justice is the second most prominent value (56.3), the data suggests a relatively strong left or progressive leaning. Our assumption that the field is mainly populated by leftist or progressive frames can be confirmed, with certain reservations (Hypothesis 3). The visions for the solution to the problems identified by organisations converge to creating new legal frameworks. While many organisations in the network do make use of movement-related repertoires, such as boycotts, confrontational or demonstrative repertoires, and blockades and occupations, conventional and more conformist repertoires are the preferred way of organisations in their respective struggles. 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He is currently a Senior Researcher inthe ERC Project “Transnational Advocacy Networks and Corporate Accountability for Major International Crimes”and leads the Romanian team of the Horizon Project “Protest as a Democracy Test: Protest Culture under Transformation and as a Transformative Power.” Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ byncnd/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this license to share adapted material derived from this chapter or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. H. P. Rammelt 73© The Author(s) 2026 R. Grosescu, J. G. Dale (eds.), Corporate Accountability for Human Rights Violations, Interdisciplinary Studies in Human Rights 16, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-05569-9_4 Corporate Accountability andtheEcological Turn: Mining Lessons fromtheRights ofNature Movement JohnG.Dale Abstract As Big Tech-driven development of artificial intelligence and data mining becomes increasingly entangled with traditional practices of extractivist mining for oil, gas, coal, and precious metals and minerals, the corporate accountability movement now must take into consideration (living and non-living) nonhuman rights to adequately defend and mobilise support for the humans, communities, ecosystems, and knowledge being impacted. Drawing on relational approaches to rights projects, this chapter examines a transnational, Indigenous-led rights of nature movement in Ecuador that successfully pre-empted the rights and extractive practices of transnational and state-owned mining corporations while creating new rights to protect Indigenous communities, the Amazonian forests they inhabit, and novel legal forms of data ownership. I then compare this case to a U.S.-focused corporate accountability movement that had separately and differently constructed rights of nature to challenge corporate rights of extractivist development. I demonstrate how the rights of nature project in Ecuador subsequently engaged and influenced this U.S.-based rights project, including its relational discourse on rights of nature and community, political aims and strategies of corporate accountability, and its movement identity. Special thanks to Daniela Kraiem for her insightful comments on this chapter, editorial scrutiny, and encouragement throughout this project. Appreciation to Maxwell Rollins and Karthik Ramanujam for their research assistance. Finally, my gratitude to Raluca Grosesçu for her steadfast partnership in the production of this co-edited volume. J. G. Dale (*) George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA e-mail: [email protected] 74 1 Introduction The extractivist practices of corporations mining for oil, gas, coal, as well as precious metals and minerals have for many decades despoiled watersheds, biodiverse forests, and other non-human living ecosystems. Scientists recently have drawn attention to how Big Tech corporations, long hyped as a “clean” industry, creates its own environmental and social harms. Now representing the most advanced practices of capitalism, Big Tech corporations have become the dominant actors shaping the digital transformation of the knowledge economy, with ill effects for workers who face economic stagnation and increasing global inequality.1 Big Tech corporations have introduced new systemic practices of extraction: the mining and colonization of data.2 As Big Tech and states invest heavily in the development of artificial intelligence (AI), we find them also increasingly building massive energysucking data centres in communities around the world to sustain their systems of data extraction, storage, and control.3 Communities are now seeing all too clearly the entanglement of extractivist practices that link the mining of data to the mining of precious metals, such as nickel, lithium, and especially copper, which is critical to the transformation of electricity that powers the data centres, and which, in turn, contribute to AI’s “compute”—that is, the computer hardware, memory, and other resources—that is required to create, train and run AI models efficiently. As Kate Crawford, co-founder of the AI Now Institute at NewYork University and author of Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence, explains: The stack required to power artificial intelligence systems goes well beyond the multilayered technical stack of data modelling, hardware, servers, and networks. […] If we visit the primary sites of mineral extraction for computational systems, we find the repressed stories of acid-bleached rivers and deracinated landscapes and the extinction of plant and animal species that were once vital to the local ecology. […] The corporate imaginaries of AI fail to depict the lasting costs and long histories of the materials needed to build computational infrastructures or the energy required to power them. The rapid growth of cloud-based computation, portrayed as environmentally friendly, has paradoxically driven an expansion of the frontiers of resource extraction.4 In response communities, activists, and scholars have demanded corporate accountability for the massive harms—environmental and social—caused by old and new extractivist industries. The corporate accountability movement, which has long struggled to prevent extractivist industries from destroying our communities and the ecosystems in which they are embedded, must now also address these industries’ relations with Big Tech. Will regulatory agencies, responsible for permitting these extractive projects, and who already cede their mandates to business interests, be 1 Unger (2019). 2 Couldry and Mejias (2019); Mejias and Couldry (2024). 3 Wong (2024). 4 Crawford (2021), pp.31, 36, and 47. J. G. Dale 75 less likely to do so when Big Tech adds more pressure? These issues will only become more pressing, especially as they become aligned with the business interests of Big Tech corporations and their massive investment in the data centres required to maintain AI Systems and advance the projects that depend on them. According to the Environmental Justice Atlas, there are currently 2225 registered cases of conflicts over extractive activities worldwide.5 If we include registered cases of conflict over data centers (70), biodiversity conservation (161), waste management (326), and water management (528), the total number rises to 3310. In Latin America, the Observatorio de Conflictos Mineros (Mining Conflicts Observatory) reports 289 conflicts over mining alone.6 When we consider that many of these conflicts are occurring in the Amazonian forest (“the lungs of the Earth”), we are reminded of the global consequences of these “Latin American” mining conflicts. Even in jurisdictions most friendly to environmentalist claims rooted in human rights and the rights of nature, such as Ecuador, which I will discuss in far more detail below, “losing cases tend to be ones versus large extractive interests.”7 In their various campaigns to address the threats and ongoing harms posed by the extractive practices of corporations, corporate accountability movements have for decades invoked human rights discourse. Whether within or outside formal political and legal institutional channels, mobilising strategies typically rely on justificatory discourses, such as those based on human rights norms or claims, to account for their action. The threats posed by climate change, and fuelled more so by the environmental demands of AI, are leading many human rights and corporate accountability activists, advocates, and scholars to re-think how such discourses adequately speak to the changing relations between humans, corporations, technology, and natural ecosystems. In this chapter I explore how some corporate accountability movements, scholars, and activists are taking an ecological turn, shifting to a more relational approach to human rights, in combination with rights for non-human actors (including the rights of nature itself), to combat the extreme harms caused by extractivist industries more generally. I consider how these new discourses might play out in the context of corporate accountability movements looking to rein in Big Tech, in which non-human actors, such as corporations, already exercise rights—often to the detriment of human beings and the health of ecosystems, such as forests, watersheds, and oceans. I begin by describing how movements might think more relationally about rights, introducing Rodríguez-Garavito’s concept of “More-Than-Rights”8 and Jung’s concept of the “rights project.”9 I reflect on how such an approach might help us better 5 Available at https://ejatlas.org/ (accessed 3.02.2025). The search was conducted in January 2025, using the following categories: mineral ores and building materials extraction, fossil fuels and climate justice; energy and biomass and land conflicts. 6 Available at www.ocmal.org/ (accessed 3.02.2025). 7 Gordon (2019), p.85. 8 Rodríguez-Garavito (2024). 9 Jung (2024). Corporate Accountability and the Ecological Turn: Mining Lessons from the Rights… 76 understand the challenges (cultural, political, legal, ecological, and technological) that corporate accountability projects now face operating under conditions of a digitally transforming Anthropocene. I draw on this approach to examine a case of a transnational Indigenous-led rights project that has been successfully struggling for corporate accountability against existentially harmful extractivist corporate practices in Ecuador. They have done this in part by constructing, defending, and advancing the rights of the Amazonian forest in which they live—a right of nature itself, not dependent upon harm to humans. Then, with an eye on protecting the data that they and transnationally allied scientists are collecting to monitor the ongoing protection and regeneration of their forest (and themselves), they are also constructing novel forms of collective data ownership rights, which they envision sharing with their Living Forest (Kawsak Sacha). In order to illustrate how relationally configured rights projects in different contexts may converge,10 and to explore the mutual effects of their engagement, I also examine a different rights project that began in 1995in Pennsylvania in a U.S.- based mainstream environmental organisation. It initially focused on preventing extractivist corporations from proceeding with projects that would have negative impacts on local communities, such as pollution and health problems. By the mid2000s, it had changed tactics to became the leading organisation working to forge rights of nature laws inlocal communities across the U.S.I examine its shift in strategy (and the impact of) pitting the legal personhood of nature against the legal personhood of corporations. I then draw on existing socio-legal historical and political anthropological ethnographic research to show that this organisation’s eventual engagement with the Indigenous-led transnational rights of natureproject in Ecuador, especially it’s understandings of relations between humans and nature, and political community, helped to transform this U.S.-based rights project. The new extractivism of the digitally transforming conditions of the Anthropocene has generated new ontological threats and politics that today challenge the prospects, and even the notion, of a global human rights project. As William Connolly, puts it, “to name the Anthropocene […] is to challenge human exceptionalism. […] And it is to invite the humanities [and social sciences] to forge intellectual and political alliances with geologists, glaciologists, climatologists, and palaeontologists who link this era to several other bumpy periods that preceded it. The preciousness of classical humanism must be challenged by…entangled humanism.”11 The two rights projects I discuss offer reason for hope that it is at least possible to entangle extractivist development projects. I conclude that relational approaches to understanding the construction of rights and agency of humans (social systems) and nonhumans (natural ecosystems and technological systems) must take into consideration the pluriversal politics that 10 Ibid., p.266, on comparing “multiscalar” yet differently contextualized rights projects as relational objects; See also Guarnizo and Smith (1998), on comparing “transnational social formations.” 11 Connolly (2017), p.33. J. G. Dale 77 have emerged in the wake of the ecological and technological turns across many fields of knowledge production. This can open up strategic discursive possibilities for bridging and strengthening multiscalar corporate accountability movements and their rights projects. 2 Relational Approaches toRights 2.1 Entangling Rights Projects “If the human rights project is to remain relevant in the Anthropocene,” argues César Rodríguez-Garavito, Professor of Clinical Law and Director of the MoreThanHuman Rights (MOTH) Project at NewYork University’s School of Law, “it needs to take into consideration the rights of nonhumans.”12 He has in mind predominantly the living ecosystems and living nonhuman species that constitute them. He does not see humans as separate from nature but, rather, symbiotically and deeply entangled,13 much in the way his MOTH colleague biologist and author Merlin Sheldrake describes in his best-selling book, Entangled Life.14 RodríguezGaravito sees the rights of humans beings as “intrinsically entangled” with the rights of nonhumans and embedded within the rights of nature15—“all subjects of rights (from people to animals to forests) are ecosystems.”16 Provocatively yet seriously he asks, “if biology has become ecology, if individuals are ecosystems, where does that leave human rights, which arose to protect Homo sapiens?”17 A conceptual foundation of human rights is the hierarchical order that places humans above nonhumans. Philosopher of Human Rights (and MOTH Project affiliate) Will Kymlicka explains, “the theory and politics of human rights has been grounded in ideas of human supremacism and has been complicit in many harms and injustices done to the more-than-human-world. … Insofar as the theory and practice of human rights rests on supremacist views, it is in clear tension with the project of MOTH rights, which rejects the idea that intrinsic value is an exclusively human quality.”18 Anthropocentric approaches to the environment, such as the right to a healthy environment or the application of conventional rights to environmental protection, only protect nonhumans to the extent that it is necessary to redress harms to individual human beings. “Ecocentric understandings of rights,” RodríguezGaravito explains, “aim to protect and redress harms to nonhumans themselves, 12 Rodríguez-Garavito (2024), p.33. 13 Ibid., p.34. 14 Sheldrake (2020). 15 Rodríguez-Garavito (2024), p.29. 16 Ibid, p.35. 17 Ibid., p.34. 18 Kymlicka (2024), pp.56, 58. Corporate Accountability and the Ecological Turn: Mining Lessons from the Rights… 78 above and beyond the associated harms to humans.”19 Both approaches will continue to exist—even if in tension. How might we shrink the gap? Rodríguez-Garavito describes his approach to thinking about rights as “relational.”20 In seeking to call attention to the rights of marginalised, living nonhumans, this approach entails “relaxing the legal frontier between human and MOTH subjectivities”21 to ground a different moral relation between them. There would seem to be a tension within this approach, perhaps a dual strategy, in which he first ascribes (moral) “intrinsic value” to living nonhumans as the ontological grounding from which the rights of these nonhumans derive, yet he then also works relationally (beyond the strategic essentialism of his starting point) to generate such subjectivities in the social world of human consciousness, relations and institutions. The scholarship advancing relational approaches to rights and their subjects is robust, but also diverse. Sociologist Minwoo Jung advocates for a relational approach that altogether eschews conceiving of rights as substances, that is, as a given set of entitlements, privileges, or protections that can be granted, lost or possessed, say, as a derivative of intrinsic value such as rights as a universal norm, or as an Indigenous culture, or as a colonial and neo-imperial imposition.22 Jung’s relational approach emphasises rights (as well as agency and power) as social constructs that derive their meaning and significance within a relational setting.23 Jung proposes the concept of the “rights project” as an analytical construct for focusing on how rights become a project, for whom, and what it does in a relational context. It is a “context-specific endeavour of marginalised communities to envision, claim, and achieve rights on their own terms and in their own ways.”24 A rights project asks, “how is the notion of rights envisioned, articulated, and enacted not just in relation to but also in opposition to, or even beyond, the global human rights discourse.”25 It has the advantage of allowing us to “capture actors’ collective efforts, in the name of rights, to speculate, plan, strategise, and optimise toward meaningful ends in a multiscalar relational context,”26 and to “denaturalise the politically charged notion of rights while acknowledging its ongoing significance in a globalizing world.”27 Jung’s relational sociology of rights also enables a reconsideration of the state’s role in constituting rights projects. “The concept of the rights project redirects our analysis from the state’s control over predetermined rights to the efforts of marginalized communities to define and enact rights as a context-specific project that 19 Rodríguez-Garavito (2024), p.40. 20 Ibid., p.38. 21 Ibid., p.41. 22 Minwoo Jung (2024), pp.257, 261, 273–274. 23 Ibid., p.261, drawing on Emirbayer (1997) and Desmond (2014) and Somers (1994). 24 Ibid, p.256. 25 Ibid., p.257. 26 Ibid., p.263. 27 Ibid., p.257. J. G. Dale 79 sometimes aligns with…but other times challenges or goes beyond…the state’s legitimacy over rights.”28 Thus, we can view the state as one powerful relational axis among many others (e.g., corporations, regulatory agencies, international NGOs, or international human rights systems) with which marginalised communities negotiate. Both Rodriguez-Garavito’s and Jung’s relational approaches clearly focus on how rights are being socially constructed (and possibly, but not necessarily, institutionalised in law). Yet, Jung’s relational analysis does not take into consideration the socially constructed agency and rights of nonhumans in the way RodríguezGaravito, importantly, does. How might we expand this analytical construct of the rights project to make conceptual room for understanding the emerging recognition of relations between humans and nonhumans? Mark Goodale also promotes a relational approach to rights animated by the virtue of both human and nonhuman solidarity. He shows us how we might produce ethnographically rich relational subjectivities in which human rights principles and practices are generated from within overlapping temporal, spatial, and even cosmological networks within one’s own social and political communities, past and future generations, and the wider non-human world.29 Goodale clearly identifies the tension that arises when decentring orthodox accounts of human rights subjectivity expressed through the normative category of human rights described within the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (i.e., “all members of the human family”), particularly when we subsume the associated rights, obligations, and interests of human beings “within a broader, indeed universal ontological interdependence.”30 Among other things, a regime of (human) rights based in ecological interconnectedness…implies a kind of antipodean system in which most of the key elements are reversed or inverted: the parts are the sum of the whole; duties give rise to rights; the (human rights) subject is not a person but persons in relations; and juridical identity is embedded in actions rather than individuals.31 But toward what kind of political strategies might thinking in terms of such universal ontological interdependence lead us? And who, then, is “us”? This challenge to sociocentrism, as William Connolly argues in Facing the Planetary,32 renders problematic the projection of any smooth horizon into the future. “To what pluralities, human and non-human, might we belong– even if we decide that the term belonging must be suspended in favour of a pursuit of plural sites of attachment?”33 Neither Goodale nor Connolly has an answer to this question. 28 Ibid., 275. 29 Goodale (2020, 2022). 30 Goodale (2020), p.61. 31 Ibid. 32 Connolly (2017). 33 Ibid., p.33. Corporate Accountability and the Ecological Turn: Mining Lessons from the Rights… 80 Connolly does, however, offer important political insight as we seek to create new networks or relational assemblages of belonging: No single class, nation, faith, gender, state, order, party, racialized constituency, or age group can form an authoritative centre of the militant ‘we’ needed today. …Old notions of pluralism as a coalition of diverse interests [implied, for example, by the concept of “stakeholders”] are…insufficient [to the task]. We see an evolving, complex, cross-regional “we” that propels diverse constituencies into larger assemblages, even as each constituency retains a host of differences. It will assemble, if it does, to respond to a planetary condition asymmetrically distributed in its effects and dangers, as participants also pay attention to other local, regional, class, racial, [gender], state, and religious questions.34 Thus, in both Connolly and Goodale’s relational politics we find echoes of the kind of “accountability” grounded in an “ethics of becoming.” This means that the focus shifts from unitary to what Ray Braidotti calls “nomadic” subjectivity.”35 Rejecting self-centred individualism (and any notion of any ethical bond grounded in the selfinterests of the individual)—but also rejecting relativism and nihilistic defeatism— her view promotes what she calls a “posthuman ethics for a non-unitary subject,” which engenders “an enlarged sense of inter-connection between self and others, including the nonhuman or ‘earth’ others.”36 2.2 The Social Agency ofNon-Living Nonhumans To push the question even further, what would emerge—for better or worse—from a relational approach to rights that takes into consideration the social construction of agency and rights of non-living nonhumans, like corporations or technological entities like AI? We already grant non-living, non-human corporations the social status of agency in our social systems. What about non-living non-human AI systems? Anicker etal. persuasively argue from a relational perspective that AI systems can exercise agency within social systems. “Agency,” as they conceptualise it, “is neither a universal property of “the social” nor an ontic quality of humans but, rather, a culturally performed yet situationally flexible social status. It results from interpretations and pragmatic attributions that subjectify their objects by providing them with a [social] license to issue actions.”37 They reject a social constructivism that sees the agency of things as a mere effect of the projections of humans.38 “Not only do we attribute agency to AI systems—in certain domains, AI systems already attribute a status to us. Even algorithms and AI systems that do not ‘know’ they are ascribing intentionality and that are not treated as agents can issue decisions that have the social significance of recognizing or 34 Ibid., p.34; see also Danowski and Viveiros de Castro (2017), pp.113–119. 35 Braidotti (2013), p.49. 36 Idid., pp.49–50. 37 Anicker etal. (2024), p.323. 38 Ibid., pp.318–319. J. G. Dale 87 When these tactics failed to secure CGC the access they sought, they resorted to coercive violence. Between October 2002 and February 2003, CGC oil company workers, accompanied by the Ecuadorian armed forces, entered—without permission—the Sarayaku people’s territory to carry out drilling, plant explosives and launch seismic prospecting activities.82 During this period they also destroyed woodlands, sources of food, medicines, and cultural heritage, and committed a series of assaults, illegal detentions, and abuses against members of the Sarayaku people,83 including the detainment of young Sarayaku girls whom CGC workers threated to rape, until an army unit intervened.84 The Sarayaku subsequently launched a legal and political campaign to defend their rights and those of the territory. They pursued a national and international strategy to oppose the entry of corporations and the exploitation of oil in their territory, and made clear that their right to consultation was not an end but a means of their resistance. Their aim was to defend their territory which they have long understood (and in 2018 formally declared in the General Assembly of the Kichwa Indigenous people of Sarayaku85) to be a “Living Forest” (Kawsak Sacha), that is, a living, conscious being and a subject of rights that are independent of, yet inseparable from, the rights of human beings. The Sarayaku asserted that the oil exploitation not only contravened FPIC, but also the rights of the land itself to remain whole and to continue to regenerate human and non-human life.86 At the national level, the Sarayaku worked with the non-governmental organisation Pachamama Foundation87 and lawyers such as Mario Melo to go before the Ecuadorian courts, but the CGC continued to proceed with oil exploitation, burying 1.5 tons of explosives in the process with the intention of detonating them as part their prospecting work. So, at the international level, they sought legal assistance from the Centre for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), a non-profit, nongovernmental organisation with consultative status before the Organisation of American States (OAS) and the United Nations. The CEJIL works to ensure that public policies and practices are in line with international human rights law, to create a hemisphere where national government protections are reinforced by a system of complementary regional protection that is prompt and effective in protecting the fundamental rights of individuals and peoples.88 The Sarayaku filed a claim against the Ecuadorian State in the Inter-American Human Rights System, first to the Commission (IAHRC) in 2003, and then, after a background report in which the 82 Kelly (2017), p.1472. 83 The Kichwa Peoples of the Sarayaku community and its members v. Ecuador (2004), at paragraphs 21, 24, 26. 84 Kichwa v. Ecuador, Petition to the Court, Inter-Am. Comm’n H.R., Case No. 12.465 (April 26, 2010), at paragraph 93. 85 Pueblo Originario Kichwa de Sarayaku and Fundación ALDEA (2021), p.6. 86 Gualinga Montalvo etal. (2024). 87 See https://www.pachamama.org.ec/sobre-nosotros (accessed 3.02.2025). 88 See https://cejil.org/en/who-we-are/ (accessed 3.02.2025). Corporate Accountability and the Ecological Turn: Mining Lessons from the Rights… 88 IACHR concluded that Ecuador violated the rights to (among others) life, integrity, property and judicial guarantees,89 to the Court (IACtHR) in 2004. After working its way through the IACtHR, in 2010, a series of recommendations were issued to the Ecuadorian state, including reparations and non-repetition measures,90 some of which have still not been implemented.91 The decision issued by the Court is of great importance because it strengthens jurisprudence on Indigenous peoples’ rights in the Inter-American system.92 In 2012, IACtHR recognized that, by authorising oil exploration in Sarayaku territory, Ecuador has disregarded the right of the people to be heard in prior consultation and in a free and informed manner. The Court ruled in favour of the Sarayaku people and ordered the Ecuadorian state to do the following: (1) issue norms guaranteeing the right to free and informed consultation (FPIC); (2) to remove the explosives; (3) to apologize; and (4) to pay compensation to the Sarayaku people.93 It is also worth noting that prior to the IACtHR’s globally unprecedented ruling on behalf of the protection of Indigenous rights, the Court engaged in additional and related unprecedented action: (1) it organised a public hearing at the Court’s headquarters in Costa Rica; (2) it visited an Indigenous territory (Sarayaku’s living forest); and (3) it held a hearing in San José, where a shaman and Sarayaku spiritual leader (Sabino Gualinga) explained how the oil company and Ecuadorian military violated the rights and led to the displacement of members of the Sarayaku people and hundreds of other living forest beings. Finally (4), the judges asked questions and listened to the Sarayaku people’s statements. Successive governments in Ecuador did present a public apology and paid compensation, but they did not remove the explosives, nor did they issue norms guaranteeing (regulating and protecting) the right of Indigenous peoples to FPIC.Not accepting the state’s half-compliance in this landmark ruling—the Sarayaku continued their mobilisation and campaign. On December 20, 2023, The Constitutional Court of Ecuador ruled on the action brought by the Sarayaku people to demand that the state comply with the orders issued over a decade earlier by the IACtHR. This case illustrates how the Sarayaku displaced human supremacy in seeking both protection for their Living Forest and accountability from CGC, the corporation responsible for the destruction of their forest. Rodríguez-Garavito’s claims, “The ecological turn would require concepts different from those that have dominated human rights.”94 The Sarayaku’s concept of the Living Forest (an interconnected living entity) put the forest on an equal footing with the Indigenous People of Sarayaku themselves, and was the root of their claim that the forest is 89 Kichwa Indigenous People of Sarayaku v. Ecuador, Merits, and Reparations, Judgment, Inter-Am. Ct. H.R. (Series C) No. 245 (June 27, 2012). 90 Ibid. 91 Gualinga Montalvo etal. (2024). 92 Ibid. 93 Kichwa Indigenous People of Sarayaku v. Ecuador, Merits, and Reparations, Judgment, Inter-Am. Ct. H.R. (Series C) No. 245 (June 27, 2012). 94 Rodríguez-Garavito (2024), p.34. J. G. Dale 89 inextricably linked to their human rights as a people. Recall that this relational approach advises we relax the frontiers between human and MOTH subjectivities. The InterAmerican Court, unlike the Ecuadorian Court, was open to taking a pluriversal approach toward the Sarayaku’s claims (or at least suspending disbelief until first visiting the Sarayaku People and their Living Forest). This case also illustrates how, following Jung’s relational approach, the analytical construct of the rights project enables us to trace the state’s role in constituting this Indigenous-led transnational rights project, directs our analysis away from the state’s control over predetermined rights (e.g., the Ecuadorian Constitution’s recognition of the rights of nature, or the Ecuadorian Federal State’s recognition of the its ownership of the minerals beneath the Sarayaku’s territorial land, and recognition of the corporate rights of the transnational mining company to “whom” it had issued mining concessions). It instead directs our analysis to the efforts of marginalized communities, such as the Sarayaku and (if we subject Jung’s concept to an ecological turn) the Living Forest, to define and enact rights as a context-specific project that sometimes aligns with, but other times challenges or goes beyond the state’s legitimacy over rights. In this case, we find the Sarayaku negotiating with an Ecuadorian state operating at multiple scales of action (Provincial and Federal, and across multiple ministries acting in contradictory ways (simultaneously and over time) in response to the claims of the Sarayaku. We also find the Sarayaku negotiating beyond the Ecuadorian State to seek recognition for its rights claims in the Inter-American Human Rights System, where it ultimately secured a favourable ruling and, consistent with the “boomerang model” of transnational pressure,95 the IACtHR pressured the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court to finally recognize the Sarayaku’s claims and the IACtHR’s ruling, and ultimately ordered the Ecuadorian State to enforce the mining corporation’s (CGC) compliance. We also find the Sarayaku negotiating the meaning of their rights along non-state axes of power, with the Pachamama Foundation and the CGC.Thus, we are able to see the ways in which the state (and other actors) did (and did not) play a role in constituting the rights of the Sarayaku and their Living Forest as they struggled within shifting situational contexts over time and at multiple scales to define, enact, and ultimately institutionalize them—for now. The Sarayaku have also been working transnationally with civil society organisations in the U.S. to build their rights project. In the next section, we will see how their transnational engagement transformed a separate rights of nature project in the U.S., while also benefitting their own work shaping Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution. But first, we will see how the Sarayaku have been working with the NYU MOTH Project to ensure remaining aspects of the Ecuadorian Federal ruling are fully implemented, and to devise strategies for mobilising data in support of its implementation. We will also see how their transnational initiatives are re-imagining data ownership (i.e., property in data). 95 Keck and Sikkink (1998); See also Dale (2008). Corporate Accountability and the Ecological Turn: Mining Lessons from the Rights… 90 The MOTH Project has been working over the past several years to support the campaign of the Sarayaku to defend their territories from extractive industries such as oil drilling and mining. Following the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court’s landmark rulings in 2021 (the Los Cedros decision) and 2023 (recognizing the right the Sarayaku Nation and the Living Forest), the Sarayaku launched the Kawsak Sacha— or, Living Forest—Initiative. To support this initiative, the MOTH Project began working with the Sarayaku and a team of researchers from the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN)96 and the Fungi Foundation97 to launch the Science Across Cultures Initiative. It aims to use data from comprehensive mycorrhizal fungal surveys to allow ongoing monitoring of fungal communities, and mobilise this data in support of the implementation of a recent court ruling as well as the broader Kawsak Sacha Initiative. According to a description of the initiative in a brief report on the MOTH Project’s website: The fungal data will likely elucidate critical biodiversity present in the territory, triggering domestic and international obligations and norms around the protection of biodiversity; this, in turn, would strengthen the Sarayaku’s opposition to extractive activities within their territory. The data and analysis will also clarify how above-ground ecosystems depend on and are connected to below-ground ecosystems, including mycorrhizal fungi; this will help elaborate the interconnectedness underpinning the Sarayaku’s claim for recognition of their territory as a subject of rights.98 The plan, they emphasise, is not to use the assessment of fungal diversity to try and “prove” in scientific terms the Sarayaku concept of the living forest, but rather to provide additional evidence that the Sarayaku can use in support of their Living Forest Initiative and legal mobilisations. They argue that, “to make effective arguments against the destruction of underground ecosystems through, for example, mining, it is important to draw attention to the countless organisms that live underground and the vital roles they play in mitigating climate change and supporting above-ground biodiversity.”99 In the long view, they imagine this collaborative work developing tools for more general application that would advance the case for inclusion of fungi in environmental frameworks and legal actions. The MOTH Project claims that one of the core concerns is how Western scientists and Indigenous knowledge holders and scientists might enter into generative, two-way collaboration, both to bring forth insight and understanding and to apply that understanding technologically. One way they plan to achieve this is through dialogue around the fungal sampling process: discussing the limits and possibilities of their sampling techniques and devising hypotheses together with the Sarayaku based on particular questions the Sarayaku have about fungal communities in their territories. They also plan to participate in ceremonies hosted by the Sarayaku and 96 See https://www.spun.earth/ (accessed 3.02.2025). 97 See https://www.ffungi.org/ (accessed 3.02.2025). 98 See https://mothrights.org/project/science-across-cultures/ (accessed 3.02.2025). 99 Ibid. J. G. Dale 91 in sustained dialogue about how the modern sciences and Indigenous knowledge systems might inform each other and work together to advance protections for the living world. Might this initiative be a good example of what William Connolly describes as “entangled humanism”(as mentioned above)? It is a reassembling of knowledge production, application of new and evolving technologies, and mobilisation of data to address planetary crises that also works to create new, democratic, relational identities that recognize our interconnected natures and bridge existing institutional dividing lines between humans and nonhumans. A next question, one that the MOTH Project also recently has raised, is “how do we protect our data– data that in this case is central to the strategies of sustaining their rights projects and corporate accountability?” Jacqueline Hicks tells us, “one issue with contemporary discussions of data ownership is their narrow definitions of property rights […] as they are currently conceived in the West. […] In other legal systems around the world, some of the main functions of property rights are to protect rights use, or to support particular social obligations.”100 The MOTH project has been pursuing their own rights project. Understanding how extractive corporations and the Federal State have interests in the forest management data that they are collecting and planning to use hold both accountable for fully implementing the orders of the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court, the activists, scientists, and lawyers supporting this project have been working to construct new legal forms of collective data ownership. As they put it, “to help instantiate the content of MOTH rights, the MOTH Project has been exploring ways to create a licensing framework in which the fungal datasets collected in an Indigenous territory in Ecuador would be owned by the forest itself, as a holder of rights, together with the Indigenous community.”101 This would be the first instance in which an Indigenous nation co-owns data rights with its territory, a development which the MOTH Project believes would help advance both human and more than human rights. They intend for this work to serve as a prototype illuminating the practical implications of MOTH rights and developing data ownership and licensing models that respects the needs and interests of the more-than-human world.102 This case has illustrated how a relational approach to rights allowed for pluriversal politics. It also has demonstrated how pluriversal politics created an opening for decentring human supremacy and lead to recognising the rights of the Living Forest. This social attribution of agency in the form of legal personhood then gave the forest the tools needed to defend itself in the Anthropocene. As a result it strengthened the rights of the Sarayaku People as well, whose lives and well-being are inextricably connected to the Living Forest. Together, they successfully pre-empted the corporate rights of the mining company that had threatened their joint existence. 100 Hicks (2023), pp.551–552. 101 https://mothrights.org/project/rethinking-data-technology-and-the-more-than-human-world/ (accessed 3.02.2025). 102 Ibid. Corporate Accountability and the Ecological Turn: Mining Lessons from the Rights… 92 4 Grass Rooting Corporate Personhood: Ecuador’s Influence onthePolitics ofCorporate Accountability intheUnited States While in Ecuador environmental and Indigenous groups have successfully worked to construct and include rights for nature in their national Constitution, in the U.S., people of cities, townships, counties, and even First Nation tribes103 have been turning to local constitutions and law to render the hazardous practices of extractivist companies violations of the rights of nature.104 One reason that communities and lawyers in the U.S. have pursued local legal strategies is that they have been unable to find points of leverage in struggles with federal and state governments and regulatory agencies that defer to claims of corporate rights to exploit natural resources held as property.105 Legal scholar Elizabeth Macpherson explains that there is an opening at the local level because in the U.S. states have their own constitutions and can enact environmental and human rights protections in their state legislative codes. Within each state, local government authorities with varying regulatory powers also have the authority to pass ordinances that may include human rights and environmental protections.106 Even so, claims rooted in human rights meet with stiff resistance, “even as they are co-opted, adapted, and ‘stretched’ to pursue improved environmental outcomes and constitutional protections are secured to ‘trump’ business as usual.”107 A new corporate accountability strategy was necessary in the United States, and some organisations began to turn the rights of nature. One of the most creative organisations advancing claims to a right of nature in the U.S. is the Community Environmental Legal Defence Fund (CELDF), a small, not-for-profit, public interest legal organisation, established in 1995. The CELDF was among the first organisations in the U.S. to work with local community groups to agitate for rights of nature, with the aim of simultaneously subordinating constitutional protections for corporations. CELDF has also promoted legal doctrine that defines state law as a “floor” to which local communities can add civil, human and ecological rights protections. The CELDF works with local communities and government across the U.S. to draft and advance laws to establish rights for ecosystems as well as human rights to water and a liveable climate, and to ban practices such as fracking, factory farming, sewage sludging of farmland and water privatisation. 103 Eco Jurisprudence Monitor (October 15, 2024). 104 Fitz-Henry (2018), p.85. 105 Ibid. 106 Macpherson (2021), p.339. 107 Ibid., p.338. J. G. Dale 93 CELDF also has been working with First Nation communities to establish Rights of Nature in tribal law that recognise the rights of ecosystems and natural communities to exist and thrive, and empowering people and their governments to defend and enforce these rights. Their tagline is that they are “helping build a decolonial movement for community rights and the rights of nature to advance democratic, economic, social, and environmental rights– building upward from the grassroots to the state, federal, and international levels.”108 CELDF is not simply targeting the state for legal inclusion of rights of nature, but also targeting civil society’s cultural ways of thinking and being with regard to the relations between humans and nonhuman life. However, CELDF’s initial corporate accountability strategy in their first decade of work was typical of mainstream environmental organisations in the U.S.— appealing state-issued environmental permits. This strategy proved largely fruitless in terms of scoring legal victories. Companies were able to remedy any procedural errors CELDF identified and eventually gain the approval of the state—rendering CELDF’s lawyers helpful, if unintentional, facilitators of the permitting process.109 By the mid-2000s, they increasingly began pitting the legal personhood and rights of nonhuman ecosystems against the legal personhood and rights of nonhuman corporations (which already were recognized in U.S. law). In other words, the CELDF and the activists with whom they work began prioritizing strategies for legally transforming natural communities and ecosystems from forms of property to types of persons with the aim of extending legal standing to intervene in environmental contestations. How did this change in CELDF’s thinking and strategy by the mid-2000s come about? As the debates over Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution were unfolding, Fundación Pachamama, one of the organisations that had been promoting the idea of nature as a subject of rights, invited lawyers from CELDF to have a conversation and share their experiences in writing rights of nature into city ordinances in the United States.110 While the CELDF was at first reticent to attend, seeing Ecuador’s efforts as distant from their own work, they agreed to travel to Ecuador to participate in the discussions,111 which included many diverse environmental groups from the Global South rights of nature movement as well as Indigenous groups who spoke of the need to recognise plurinational collective rights (plurinacionalidad)112 and the longstanding worldviews (cosmovisiones) in which the Earth (Pachamama) is a living being. This transnational engagement was not just another example of importing ideas from the Global North, nor of how notions of rights are exported from the Global North to the Global South through hegemonic flows of transnational 108 See https://celdf.org/about-celdf/ (accessed 3.02.2025). 109 Fitz-Henry (2018), p.88. 110 Akchurin (2015), p.952; Pietari (2016), pp.41–42; Huneeus (2022), p.146. 111 Huneeus (2022), p.146. 112 Akchurin (2015), p.954. Corporate Accountability and the Ecological Turn: Mining Lessons from the Rights… 94 relations. Rather, as Professor of Law AlexandraHuneeus argues, “it was clearly a fruitful moment of exchange that would reshape the U.S. movement.”113 Political and legal anthropologist Erin Fitz-Henry notes that CELDF’s new strategic approach is substantially different from those used by other environmental groups who have been working to extend to ecological systems legal standing to challenge that of corporations. She cites research documenting a wide range of strategies pushing for the following: more robust forms of federal compliance with FPIC commitments; an international tribunal to prosecute crimes of ecocide; more serious consideration of the environmental justice concerns of affected communities before granting environmental permits; and extension of human rights to include the right to a healthy environment, and the right to a safe climate. However, “[the strategy of deploying] the ‘rights of nature’ in the United States are unique,” argues Fitz-Henry, “in that they are framed explicitly by way of juxtaposition with the rights of corporations in order to perform a kind of moral-political double labour– simultaneously extending ecological rights and undermining corporate constitutional rights.”114 Appreciation for the CEDLF’s ecological turn and unique strategy cannot be well measured in terms of its legal impact. As Huneeus observes, “While much has been written about the emerging rights of nature movement’s recent legal gains around the world, scholars are just beginning to study the U.S. experience, which unfolds at the humble level of small-town and city ordinances and so often ends in swift legal or political defeat. …It is not that these groups are creating a new path to legal success. Rather they are re-defining success, using law in a symbolic way so as to ignite new conversations.”115 In a recent press release for his new book Wouldn’t You Say? A Collection of Essays about Environment and Community, CELDF’s Education Director Ben Price, describes how CELDF explained the new strategy to the communities with whom they were working: “we shared our hope that gradually, eventually, the idea of legal rights for living ecosystems would be normalised and accepted. We were, we explained, not so much engaged in legal strategy as we were testing a theory of experiential education and cultural change.”116 Rather than challenging corporate personhood by starting with a blueprint for dropping an untested constitutional amendment into the U.S.Constitution, as organisations such as Move To Amend117 are pursuing, CELDF is thinking pluriversally and transversally, spurring broader conversations across different relational contexts and building a body of law that begins to confront a greater multiplicity of “persons” and ways that local communities are embedded in and connected through ecosystems. Such a strategy might, as Fitz-Henry suggests, serve to recontextualise 113 Ibid. 114 Fitz-Henry (2018), p.90. 115 Huneeus (2022), pp.136–137. 116 See CELDF, “Press release: New book reflects on 30 years of activism for community and nature’s rights,” (December 23, 2024), available athttps://celdf.org/2024/12/new-book-reflectson-30-years-of-activism-for-community-and-natures-rights/ (accessed 9.26.2025). 117 Fitz-Henry (2018), p. 96. J. G. Dale 95 local understandings of corporate personhood and nature as property by attending to the knowledge and imaginings of other nonhumans.118 At a minimum, this strategy’s multiple, local legal experiments—such as passing municipal ordinances affirming rights of nature to educate the public while knowing they eventually will be pre-empted by states—operate as a democratic stress test for the viability of destabilizing corporate personhood. By drawing state and corporate legal responses, they more publicly expose the legal relations of power that support corporate persons at the expense of those human communities and living nonhuman ecosystems. As for this strategy’s impact on public understanding and cultural change, it is too soon to say. CELDF points to the rising rate of growth in such community ordinances across the United States as evidence of positive cultural change.119 However, there also recently have been a spree of anti-rights of nature legislation passed by the states of Florida,120 Ohio,121 and Utah,122 which pre-emptively reject localities within their states from passing rights of nature legislation or ordinances. This transnational exchange between CELDF and the activists and lawyers fuelling the movement in Ecuador served as a catalyst for CELDF’s rethinking its own discourse on the relations between local communities and the ecosystems in which they are embedded, and its commitment to experiential education through rights of nature legislation as critical groundwork for cultural change. It also helps to account for the shift in their political aim and strategies of corporate accountability, of denaturalising the rights of corporate persons and the state pre-emption laws that ensure corporate personhood goes unchallenged at the local level. Furthermore, their efforts to newly engage with First Nation communities only began after their experience with Indigenous groups in Ecuador. Ultimately, this transnational exchange transformed how CELDF identified the rights project in which it is embedded. It now identifies as part of an Indigenous-led transnational rights of nature movement, working from the grassroots up to state, federal and international levels, to help build a decolonial movement for community rights and the rights of nature to advance democratic, economic, social, and environmental rights.123 Most critically, opening up space for pluriversal politics in the United States created room to conceptualize a right of nature on an equal footing with the rights in 118 Fitz-Henry (2018), p.87. 119 Ibid. For work by political anthropologists and sociologists exploring the material and ideological effects of the legal doctrine of corporate personhood and of the corporate form more generally, see Fligstein (1990); DiMaggio (2001); Dale (2011); Welker etal. (2011); Bashkow (2014); Kirsch (2014); Welker (2014). See https://celdf.org/about-celdf/ (accessed 3.02.2025). 120 See https://www.centerforenvironmentalrights.org/news/oi8znm3xqubni1otrk3lv4t17mj2tk (accessed 3.02.2025). 121 See https://celdf.org/2019/07/rights-of-nature-ban/ (accessed 3.02.2025). 122 See https://www.earthlawcenter.org/blog-entries/2024/2/utah-advances-anti-rights-of-naturebill-with-implications-for-ai (accessed 3.02.2025). 123 See https://celdf.org/about-celdf/ (accessed 3.02.2025). Corporate Accountability and the Ecological Turn: Mining Lessons from the Rights… 96 property held by corporate persons. Anicker etal.’s relational conception of agency, as we saw in Sect. 2, opens the path to understanding why some (but not other) nonhuman systems may be socially granted agency. They persuasively argue that AI, operating in specific domains, already exercises such agency. It also lays the conceptual groundwork for socially attributing rights to all manner of non-living nonhumans, including (corporately owned) AI.If we are moving in the direction of socially attributing rights to AI, then nature must have the tools to defend itself as well. This case shows how an Indigenous-led rights of nature movement in Ecuador transformed corporate accountability practices in the U.S., illustrating how conceptions of rights do not flow only from North to South, or “from the West to the Rest.” The rights of nature movement in the U.S. that began over two decades ago inlocal municipalities and townships was an effort to pit two legal fictions against each other—the nonhuman legal personhood of nature against the nonhuman legal person of Corporations. The strategy was meant to destabilize the predominant discourses on the legal personhood of corporations. Yet this approach was largely contained by state courts in the U.S. The legal success of the right of nature movement in the Global South (at the national, regional, and international levels) have provided a critical source of moral, if not legal, legitimacy to U.S.-focused corporate accountability struggles, which have continued to pursue rights of nature claims in U.S. courts as a strategy of symbolic politics and public awareness raising. This case suggests how this Indigenousled transnational rights of nature movement, with which the CELDF now identifies, may be serving to strengthen both the corporate accountability movement and the human rights movement at a time in which climate change and digital data colonization—and the corporations contributing to these mutually reinforcing processes— pose existential threats to human and nonhuman living beings. 5 Conclusion The new extractivism of the digitally transforming conditions of the Anthropocene has generated new ontological threats and politics that today challenge the prospects, and even the notion, of a global human rights project. Rodríguez-Garavito argues, “if the human rights project is to remain relevant in the Anthropocene, it needs to take into consideration the rights of nonhumans.” I agree that human rights must take an ecological turn. So must the corporate accountability movement. In this chapter, I have argued that both of these movements are confronting a technological turn as well, and that if the corporate accountability movement is to remain relevant in the digitally transforming relations of the Anthropocene, it also needs to take into consideration the relationally constructed rights of Big Tech, as well as the alternative rights of data ownership and stewardship now being constructed by and for marginalized communities, both human and nonhuman. J. G. Dale 103 To challenge such Eurocentric perspectives, a third category of studies has centred its analysis on how Global South actors construct corporate accountability and evaluate and re-think transnational cooperation in this arena. On the one hand, some scholars have argued that transitional cooperation plays a limited role in advancing corporate accountability. Mobilisations of local and weakly resourced groups, including victims’ associations and local judicial officials from the Global South, have often been more successful in advancing justice than have transnational campaigns.6 As such, scholars, activists and funding organisations should prioritise such local mobilisations and de-centre the value of transnational activism. These studies remained however embedded in a liberal narrative of corporate accountability and its “best” levels of actions, without engaging with global inequalities and ideological conflicts within national and transnational activism. On the other hand, while neo-Marxist or decolonial scholars argued for the importance of transnational activism, they also emphasised how cross-regional cooperation reinforces existing power dynamics and dominant liberal and neoliberal narratives on corporate accountability. They pointed to the disjuncture between the goals of Southern and Northern activists, the challenges of coordinating the varied objectives of transnational social movements, and the limitations of transitional solidarity, particularly when classedbased struggles and visions about sovereignty from the Global South must be advocated for in Global North venues.7 In addition, due to the fact that they are situated in the Global North and receive funding from Global North donors, the most powerful NGOs tend to support projects that enhance “the neoliberal offensive against the subaltern peoples and regions of the world”,8 as prompted by international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Furthermore, in their quest to market Global South causes to Western publics, Western NGOs often employ language and activist tactics that are familiar and acceptable in the West, but do not necessarily reflect the world visions and demands of the Global South groups with whom there have partnered.9 Such marketisation can lead to the weakening or even abandonment of principles fundamental to the activism in question.10 This chapter aims to contribute to the critical literature on transnational activism for corporate accountability by emphasising the values and limitations of crossborder cooperation between Guatemalan activists and Western NGOs and donors after the end of the Guatemalan civil war in 1996. I argue that numerous organisations from the Global North supported local mobilisations against the extractive industry and other projects of Western economic modernisation, including large hydroelectric dams and monoculture plantations, through legal and scientific 6 Payne etal. (2020); Pereira etal. (2022). See also the chapter by Leigh Payne and Gabriel Pereira in this volume. 7 De Sousa (2005); Gill (2009); Baars (2019); Bueckert (2019); Freeman (2024). 8 Munck (2006), p.331. See also Brett (2015). 9 Gill (2009); Seay (2015). 10 de Waal etal. (2015). The Values and Limitations of Transnational Activism for Corporate Accountability… 104 assistance, funding and the “protective accompaniment” (acompañamiento).11 of different communities and local NGOs. This Western backing was crucial for both the economic survival of Guatemalan CSOs and the protection of human rights and environmental activists in country plagued by systematic repression against individuals and communities that oppose neoliberal, extractivist projects. Nevertheless, Western support came with several limitations. First, support was generally contingent upon a non-violent culture of protest rooted in contemporary Western liberal tactics aimed at de-radicalising political action. When antiextractivist protests gained violent character, Western NGOs largely withdrew their support. Second, funding was predominantly directed towards the defence of the civil, political and cultural rights of Indigenous groups or towards the promotion of the soft-law international instruments in the domain of business and human rights. Only rarely did Western donors support projects of economic emancipation and autonomy that reflected Indigenous visions and interests. Third, transnational litigation brought against Global North companies in their home countries primarily focused on cases of corporate complicity in physical violence against human rights and environmental activists rather than on land grabbing or the imposition of an economic model that impoverished Indigenous communities and radically altered their culture and way of life. Such strategies were not only designed to comply with restrictive Global North legislation: they also reflected the structural constraints inherent to moving beyond the liberal lexicon of rights that has dominated global affairs since the mid-1970s. Finally, in their pursuit of Western public support for Indigenous anti-extractivist struggles, Global North NGOs often constructed communication strategies that oversimplified and depoliticised the economic conflicts unfolding in Guatemala and even reduced Indigenous perspectives on the world to crude narratives inspired by Western blockbusters and bestsellers. By examining a series of transnational campaigns for corporate accountability in Guatemala, and drawing upon twenty interviews conducted with both Guatemalan and Western activists, the chapter underlines how cross-border mobilisations bolstered and legitimised local struggles against extractivist development. However, such transnational activism also re-enforced liberal and Western vocabularies of rights that restricted the capacity of Indigenous activists to assert their own world visions and subsequent approaches to economic development. 11 “Protective accompaniment” or “acompañamiento” is a strategy pioneered by the International Peace Brigades in the 1990s to support and protect human rights and environmental activists at risk. R. Grosescu 105 2 Neoliberalism, Extractivism andIndigenous World Visions inPost-1996 Guatemala After the end of civil war in 1996, Guatemala embarked upon a broad programme of neoliberal development, which included the privatisation of various economic sectors and foreign investment in extractivist industries, large hydroelectric plants, and monocrop agro-industrial projects.12 This economic reconfiguration was designed to increase economic growth and participation in global markets and was supported by the national elite and international institutions such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.13 Extractivist projects, including in the mining sector,14 were frequently implemented in the traditional territories of Indigenous groups, which continue to represent around forty-five per cent of the country’s population.15 While the 1995 Agreement on the Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples (signed as part of the peace process following the civil war) established political and cultural rights for Indigenous people and redefined Guatemala as a multiethnic, multicultural, and multilingual nation, it did not touch upon economic rights, including the restitution of ancestral Indigenous lands that had been progressively colonized since the sixteenth century.16 Although Guatemala ratified the 1989 ILO Convention No. 169—which mandates that Indigenous people be consulted prior to any economic or infrastructure development on their traditional territories—in 1996, the government did not organise such consultations or ignored them when they resulted in opposition to the dominant economic trend. What is more, such neoliberal advances often involved new land grabs, the forced displacement of Indigenous and other rural populations, forced economic migration, environmental degradation (including massive pollution, the deviation of rivers, and deforestation) and the use of the military to repress protests.17 They also exacerbated struggles over the ownership of lands and resources, insofar as natural resources in Guatemala are for the most part located on 12 While such projects were implemented from the 1970s onwards, neoliberal development accelerated after the 1996 Peace Agreements, as a reflection of the global Washington Consensus and its economic doctrine and practice. 13 On neoliberalism and extractivism in post-1996 Guatemala, see for example Nolin and Stephens (2010); Yagenova (2012); Spalding (2023), pp.107–116; Batz (2023). 14 In 2021, there were nearly 300 active mining exploitation licenses to extract a range of minerals and metals, with the largest operations controlled by Canadian and US corporations, See Batz (2023). 15 Guatemala is predominantly Indigenous: There are twenty-one Mayan linguistic communities, in addition to two other Indigenous groups, the Xinca and the Garífuna. The remainder of the population is mestizo or ladino (non-Indian), mixed race descendants of Indigenous groups, Spanish settlers and other immigrants who colonized Guatemala beginning in the sixteenth century. In many municipalities in the highland departments, over 95% of the population is Mayan. 16 Sieder (1997); Brett (2015); Spalding (2023), p.293. 17 Batz (2023); Willems (2010). The Values and Limitations of Transnational Activism for Corporate Accountability… 106 Indigenous territories, but the communities that reside there continue to be the most affected by poverty and pervasive racism.18 Indigenous reactions to these projects have been mixed and complex. Many saw mining exploitation and the construction of mega-hydroelectric projects as a source of jobs, income and development. In contrast, others considered them an overt attack on their culture, ways of being, and the very survival of their communities. To understand this opposition and the subsequent organised resistance, one must reflect on Indigenous worldviews and economic activities. From an economic perspective, most of Guatemala’s Indigenous population lives in rural areas, sustained by subsistence farming and fishing. As mining operations often entail water and soil contamination, a loss of biodiversity, and deforestation, they have a direct negative impact on such economic activities. They also result in severe health problems for the local population, especially near operations that involve tailing and the use of cyanide. The construction of mega-hydroelectric dams has also impacted the Indigenous farming and fishing economy through deforestation and the deviation of rivers, cutting access to water and reconfiguring the fish population. This environmental degradation accelerated the pauperisation of Indigenous and other rural communities, resulting in forced economic migration to urban areas or across borders, in addition to the forced displacement of communities in order to implement various megadevelopment projects.19 From a cultural perspective, Western development and modernisation projects stand in stark conflict with Indigenous cosmovisions that understand the (Western) categories of nature, culture, and human as being, in fact, inseparable.20 In contrast to the Western cartesian divide between nature and humans, which has been translated into international law as the separation of human rights law and environmental law into two distinct subfields, Indigenous philosophies postulate the essential connection between humans, animals and plants as part of “life”. They thus represent a radical rethinking of a Western ontology and epistemology that replaces “a binary view of the world with a relational one,” and “stress[es] the reproduction of life as against the reproduction of capital accumulation.”21 For instance, in an interview from 2019, a Guatemalan Indigenous activist pointed out that: for Indigenous Peoples, everything has life, and therefore it should have rights just like people have; for many Indigenous communities, this is very clear, but this is not true for the capitalist West, which sees every living thing as something to be exploited. […] I do not want to talk about human rights. I want to talk about the right of life. For us, everything has life, and therefore it should have rights just like people do.22 18 IWGIA (2024). For racism in Guatemala, see Adams (2005); Casáus Arzú (2008). 19 Shipton (2017); Batz (2023). 20 MacNeill (2020), Chapter 6. 21 Munck (2021), p.171. See also Altman (2020). 22 Personal Interview with with anonymous activist, Guatemala City, Guatemala, 19 August 2019. See also Iňigo (2023). R. Grosescu 107 Consequently, Indigenous groups have an alternative discourse on development and rights than the dominant Western one: a discourse that “promotes an ethics of development that subordinates economic objectives to ecological criteria including food sovereignty, control of natural resources and water as a human right.”23 They aspire to—and to a certain extent have, in some communities, achieved—“an economic organisation through practices of reciprocity and solidarity, community-level action and self-management” that stands as an alternative to capitalist relations of production and distribution.24 From this perspective, Western modernisation and economic projects not only impact the livelihood conditions of Indigenous groups, but also affect their cultural and spiritual essence, defined as the interconnected trilogy between the human being, the spirit, and the natural world.25 Moreover, the arrival of extractivist industries has been labelled by Indigenous groups as the “fourth invasion,” after Spanish colonization, the creation of the plantation economy beginning in the late nineteenth century, and the state-sponsored genocide during the civil war (1960–1996).26 3 The Guatemalan Anti-Extractivist Resistance andIts Selective Transnational Support The expansion of extractivist politics after 1996 and especially in the mid-2000s generated strong opposition across the country. Guatemalan Indigenous communities and other militants fighting against mining and other mega-development projects began to build multisectoral coalitions that included local communities, Catholic Church officials, human rights and environmental NGOs, and associations of lawyers. Their main tactics comprised protests, roadblocks, scientific activism, demands for free and informed consultations at the local level, and judicial interventions.27 Such mobilisations took place across the country and against a variety of mining operations. The stronger and more mediatised anti-mining movements included the resistance against gold exploitation by Gold Corporation in the western highlands of Guatemala (Mina Marlin) and by Radius Gold in La Puya (Mina El Tambor), near Guatemala City; silver extraction by Tahoe Resources in San Rafael Las Flores, near Guatemala City (Mina El Escobal); and nickel exploitation by Sky Resources and HudBay in El Estor, on the shores of Izabal lake in eastern Guatemala (Mina 23 Munck (2021), p.171. 24 Acosta (2018), p.108. 25 For ethnographic work on the Indigenous cosmovision in Guatemala see MacNeill (2020). 26 Batz (2022). 27 On the Guatemalan anti-mining movements and their strategies, see Spalding (2023), Chapter 4. The Values and Limitations of Transnational Activism for Corporate Accountability… 108 Fenix)—all corporations headquartered in Canada.28 Nevertheless, despite their common goals, these resistance movements did not evolve into a unified national network.29 In particular, this continued regional focus was due to the inadequacy of Guatemalan transportation infrastructure which renders travel extremely challenging, and to the limited access to digital technologies that hindered online communication. Moreover, the absence of any prominent Indigenous or leftist political party impeded alliances between activists and political elites, resulting in a nearly nonexistent level of anti-extractivist political advocacy.30 Consequently, the Guatemalan government had significant leeway in countering anti-mining movements through the forced eviction of Indigenous and other rural communities, the unlawful arrest of protestors based on fabricated evidence, and the imposition of a state of emergency in various regions of the country, followed by arbitrary police and military violence. In addition to official state repression, activists were subject to violent attacks and assassination attempts, the majority of which remained without judicial response.31 Into 2025, Guatemala continued to be one of the most dangerous countries in the world for defenders of land, territory and the environment.32 Since the signing of the Peace Agreements in 1996 that ended the civil war, the most important Guatemalan organisations involved in anti-extractivist campaigns included the ecological association Madre Selva (founded in 1996), the Centro de Acción Legal-Ambiental y Social (established in 2000), the Nim Ajpu Association of Maya Lawyers and Notaries (founded in 2004), the Xinka Parliament (founded in 2004), and the Peoples Council of the Western Highlands (created in 2008 and later renamed the Consejo del Pueblo Maya-CPO). Each of these organisations engaged in political and legal activism, with much of their work funded by Western governments, NGOs, and religious foundations. International NGOs offered a wide range of assistance, from the publication of reports and media articles and the release of documentary films exposing governmental violence against protestors, to public campaigns in support of activists illegally arrested, to acompañamiento provided to Indigenous and rural communities during protests or negotiations with state authorities. Additionally, Western actors initiated transnational litigation against Western companies accused of complicity in human rights violations. Organisations such as the International Peace Brigades Guatemala (PBI Guatemala), the International Accompaniment Project (ACOGUATE), the Network in Solidarity 28 For the history of these mining projects and the subsequent resistance against them, see Yagenova etal. (2020); Sveinsdóttir etal. (2021). 29 Spalding (2023), p.316. 30 Ibid. 31 On the violence against anti-mining and anti-megaproject development protests in Guatemala, see for example Paredes Marín (2016); Sieder (2017); Yagenova et al. (2020); Sveinsdóttir etal. (2021). 32 The Unit for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders– Guatemala (UDEFEGUA) reported 3.574 (in 2022) and 5.965 (in 2023) attacks against human rights defenders, including threats, killings, harassment and arbitrary detentions. R. Grosescu 109 with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA) or Collectif Guatemala played a leading role in defending activists and promoting their cause abroad. They often collaborated with other international NGOs such as Amnesty International, the Front Line Defenders or the International Federation of Human Rights to organise global solidarity campaigns.33 In a country marked by endemic corruption, pervasive racism against Indigenous populations, and violence against anti-extractivist campaigners, international support and transnational cooperation were crucial for securing the very survival of those who opposed the dominant economic elite. The global campaign against the imprisonment of Bernardo Caal Xol, the leader of Mayan Q’eqchi resistance against mega-hydroelectric dams in Cahabón, Alta Verapaz, in northern Guatemala, serves as a compelling illustration of the importance of transnational activism in standing with activists at risk. In January 2018, Bernardo Caal was imprisoned for defending the rights of the Mayan Q’eqchi’ communities affected by the construction of a hydroelectric project on the Cahabón river. In November 2018, he was sentenced to seven years in prison for property destruction and incitement to public violence. PBI Guatemala promptly launched a campaign protesting against his arrest, arguing that the sentence was unjust and based on fabricated evidence. PBI continued to monitor the case and systematically documented its progress. According to Bernardo Caal, “knowing that PBI is looking out for me in prison dissuades those who want to cause me harm.”34 PBI also called for the support of international institutions, including the UN.In Decembre 2018, various UN special rapporteurs on the rights of Indigenous populations and the situation of human rights defenders, as well as members of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights denounced Bernardo Caal’s arrest as an “attempt to silence and discredit the legitimate exercise of the rights of the Indigenous community” and urged the Guatemalan government to “ensure the effective protection of Indigenous human rights defenders.”35 In July 2020, Amnesty International designated Bernardo Caal a “prisoner of conscience” and launched a two-pronged global campaign. On the one hand, it demanded his immediate release, engaging with both Guatemalan and international institutions, including the UN Committee on Human Rights. On the other hand, it gathered over 30.000 letters of solidarity from citizens worldwide. Other global NGOs, such as the International Organisation against Torture, the International Federation of 33 For detailed information about the activities of these organisations in Guatemala, see their websites https://pbi-guatemala.org/; https://nisgua.org/ and https://collectifguatemala.org/ (accessed 21.04.2024). Other international NGOs involved in supporting anti-extractivist campaigns in Guatemala were MiningWatch Canada, the Washington DC-based Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), the Justice and Corporate Accountability Project at York University in Toronto, and the Canadian Centre for International Justice, among others. Spalding (2023), p.132. 34 Statement by Bernardo Caal Xol, available at https://peacebrigades.org/en/our-work/what-wedo/protective-accompaniment (accessed 7.11.2024). 35 OHCHR Press Release, Guatemala: UN experts concerned indigenous leader convicted in retaliation for opposition to Oxec hydro project, available at www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2018/12/ guatemala-un-experts-concerned-indigenous-leader-convicted-retaliation?LangID=E&New sID=24031 (accessed 24.11.2024). The Values and Limitations of Transnational Activism for Corporate Accountability… 110 Human Rights, and the International Service for Human Rights filed amicus curiae and organised media campaigns in Bernardo Caal’s support. Following this extensive international mobilisation, Bernardo Caal was released from prison in March 2022, three years early. The campaign’s success was however limited, as Bernardo Caal was not acquitted of the charges against him and served four years for what most international NGOs considered as baseless accusations. However, not all movements and communities received assistance. International NGOs made their aid conditional on the use of pacifist and non-violent resistance (resistencia pacifica y no-violenta), to the point that it became a mantra for the involvement of Western organisations in specific cases. In her comparative analysis of anti-mining resistance in La Puya and San Rafael Las Flores, Ana Eugenia Paredes Marín demonstrates how the later movement lost international backing because it engaged in disruptive and violent forms of protests.36 The San Rafael Las Flores anti-mining campaign began in 2010 with peaceful protests, such as laying flowers at the entrances of the land acquired by Tahoe Resources, the Canadian embassy, and the company’s headquarters in Guatemala City. Various communities also organised local consultations and declared their opposition to the mining project, but both the state and Tahoe Resources simply ignored them. Starting in January 2012, in the absence of any response to these peaceful actions, protestors began to use disruptive and violent tactics, including the construction of roadblocks, the expulsion of the company’s employees from the communities in which they resided, house arrests, the destruction of company trucks, grocery stores, and employee housing, and even the detonation of a grenade on mine property.37 Despite the denials by community leaders of their involvement and accusations of external provocation, the government labelled the protestors “terrorists” and members of “organised crime”. In May 2013, the government declared a state of emergency and initiated a substantial crackdown on anti-mining leaders and their communities. After the events of 2012, as protests escalated to violence, Western NGOs continued to document governmental abuses, but refrained from providing direct support. In the words of one activist from San Rafael Las Flores: I was in touch with organisations, for instance the Peace Brigades. They did not grant any support to me or to our resistance, because “it wasn’t peaceful”. I had guns and this disqualified me as a human rights defender, and, in the end, (the support from these) organisa36 Paredes Marín (2016). 37 Based on the “frustration-aggression hypothesis” (Dollard etal. 1939), aggressive behaviour, including collective behaviour, can been explained by the immediate frustration or bocking of desired goals. Over time, studies increasingly complicated this direct causal relation. Researchers of contentious politics began to analyse various conditions, notably poverty, oppression, and discrimination (Gurr 1970), as the root causes of violence. Today, social movement studies, as well as conflict and terrorism studies, explain the turn by previously non-violent protest movements towards greater disruption, violence, and potentially terrorism through the procedural lens of “radicalisation” (Bosi and Malthaner 2015). Radicalisation is frequently considered to be the result of “reciprocal adjustments” during encounters between social movements and authorities (della Porta 2018). Notably, clashes with law enforcement are considered to provide a justification for the use of more violent forms of action (Ibid.). R. Grosescu 111 tions was not significant. Madre Selva at the beginning, then CALAS and ACOGUATE, Collectif Guatemala y NISGUA, but one more occasionally than the other. It was a matter of personal engagement with these organisations, more than the organisations’ engagement with the resistance.38 In El Estor, one of the most contentious sites of anti-mining resistance, protestors also employed disruptive and violent tactics, such as the construction of roadblocks, the severing of electrical wires, raising barricades in front of the mine, and violent assaults against the mining company’s employees and security personnel. With the exception of Rights Action, none of the major international NGOs working in Guatemala supported the movement. According to Julio Gonzalez from Madre Selva, “when protests are violent and when communities are highly divided over the implementation of a mining project, it becomes more difficult to back those who protest. NGOs are very cautious in such cases.”39 The lack of Western support for movements that employ disruptive and violent tactics has two explanations. On the one hand, from an instrumental and pragmatic perspective, violent protests are regarded as unproductive. They are presumed to elicit retribution and further violence from the state, pose risks to participants, and divide and alienate different sectors of society.40 Indeed, Guatemalan state violence against anti-mining protestors has often targeted not only the militants themselves, but also independent observers and representatives of NGOs providing acompañamiento (who were then criminalised based on fabricated evidence).41 For instance, in 2021, representatives of the transnational organisation ACOGUATE participated as observers in the “March for Dignity” in Guatemala City—a demonstration commemorating the international day of Indigenous Resistance. During the demonstration, participants attempted to remove the statutes of Cristopher Columbus and José María Reina Barrios, president of independent Guatemala (1892–1898), who led a national campaign to “civilise” Indigenous communities according to Western values. While ACOGUATE issued a statement denouncing all violent or illegal acts, the NGO was criminally investigated for vandalism, “attacks against the national security” and destruction of cultural heritage. ACOGUATE’s representatives were subsequently the victims of anonymous death threats and defamation campaigns on social media,42 leading the NGO to withdraw from Guatemala in 2022, due to security concerns. Such actions against Western organisations engaged in human rights work in Guatemala are a major reason for refraining from involvement in and support for social movements that resort to disruptive and violent tactics. On the other hand, ideological issues are also at stake. Violent protests are typically seen as antithetical to liberal democracy, as they challenge the purportedly peaceful democratic institutions and their system of dispute resolution. Such actions 38 Quoted by Paredes Marín (2016), p.60. 39 Personal Interview with Julio Gonzalez, Guatemala City, 5.09.2024. 40 Chenoweth and Stephan (2008). 41 Sibrián and van der Borgh (2014); Yagenova (2016). 42 UDEFEGUA (2021), pp.154, 157. The Values and Limitations of Transnational Activism for Corporate Accountability… 112 are also considered detrimental due to their destructive potential for property and persons. Liberal democracies, through the narrative of pluralism, are willing to coopt opposition—even radical opposition—as long as it does not attack the very foundations of this system of thought: the inviolability of property. Conversely, nonstate violence become an evil to be eliminated or at least mitigated.43 The rise of neoliberalism in the 1970s and its accelerated pace in the 1990s has only reinforced this narrative, contributing to the gradual delegitimisation of radical social protests. The neoliberal moment also demarcated an important shift towards a new international individualist discourse on terrorism, which ultimately worked to discredit radical collectivist goals and national liberation struggles,44 and establish a new moral order in which the right answer to state oppression is not collective struggles but individual dissidence. Following the events of 9/11 and similar attacks that occurred in Europe during the early twenty-first century, concerns regarding money laundering and terrorism financed through NGOs led to the implementation of robust financial controls and reports of risk management reporting by CSOs across the world. Violence and the defence of human rights became irreconcilable concepts in the vocabulary dominating within governments and NGOs. However, according to Anne Bordatto, a French engineer and environmental activist working with Guatemalan Indigenous communities since 2002: It is very difficult to keep making your claims in a pacifist tone when both the companies and your own government inflict so much violence against you. It is impossible. Nothing would have changed in Guatemala if they [Indigenous communities] would have resisted peacefully according to so-called international standards.45 While making funding and public support conditional on nonviolent resistance corresponds to current Western and international canons, it may inadvertently overlook the pressing local political context that renders nonviolent protests ineffective and pacificist rhetoric a weapon to suffocate social change.46 Another problematic issue in the Western selection of anti-extractivist movements is gender equality and representation. Not only did Western NGOs refrain from collaboration with Indigenous organisations that they considered to be misogynistic,47 but they often prioritised movements that included women in their leadership positions. According to Anne Bordatto: The communities elect their own representatives, but NGOs come with other visions: they want more women, they want people who can talk outside [Guatemala]… and sometimes they think that there are individuals who are more representative to be heard at the international level than the community leaders themselves. […] In most cases that I have participated in, most of the leaders were men because women decided to take care of the families 43 Greenwood-Reeves (2023), p.3. 44 Slaughter (2018), p.737. 45 Personal Interview with Anne Bordatto, 12 September 2024, online. 46 See the influential work of American anarchist Peter Gelderloos (2007) and, more recently, Malm (2021). 47 Paredes Marín (2016), p.59. R. Grosescu 119 The HudBay lawsuits reflect the importance of transnational cooperation in supporting corporate accountability initiatives. However, they also highlight the challenges and limitations of transnational civil litigation in dealing with corporate violence, as well as the difficulties involved in translating Indigenous antiextractivist demands and their vocabulary of rights, the environment and development into legal terms and political Western discourses. From the outset, Klippensteins strategically selected the accusations to fit Canadian law. Consequently, the case did not focus on halting extractivist exploitation or protecting Indigenous populations’ rights to land and cultural preservation. Instead, the law firm highlighted HudBay’s “duty to care” and duty to prevent specific human rights violations, such as murder or rape, from being committed by its subsidiaries abroad. Klippensteins drew upon Canadian jurisprudence on the “duty to care”: as all previous cases had referred to operations in Canada, the lawyers aimed to create a legal precedent and ensure the application of a “duty to care” outside Canadian territory. However, in public statements, Klippensteins underlined that the crimes in question were part of the longstanding history of violence against Indigenous resistance to mining projects in Guatemala and to Western models of development.75 The firm also condemned the infringement of Indigenous communities’ rights to free and informed consultation regarding the operation of the Fenix mine on their lands, although this aspect was not part of the legal complaint per se.76 In its defence, HudBay asserted that Canadian law did not impose a corporate “duty to care” on operations aboard. Consequently, the parent company could not be held liable for the actions of its subsidiaries in foreign countries. HudBay also contended that the lack of geographical proximity hindered the parent corporation from anticipating and preventing acts of violence against anti-mining protestors committed by Guatemalan state authorities or the subsidiary’s personnel. Moreover, Guatemalan courts were deemed more appropriate to adjudicate the case, as Guatemala was the location of the alleged crimes and the residence of most witnesses.77 In 2013, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice dismissed the defence’s argument and allowed the case to proceed to trial. The Court stated that Canadian legal precedent upheld a “duty to care” and imposed duties on companies to conduct risk assessments and establish clear parameters for the prevention of human rights violations.78 Although previous cases had only addressed human rights violations 75 The position espoused by Klippensteins’s lawyers is described in Rachel Schmidt’s documentary “Defensora” (2013), available at https://rightsaction.org/videos (accessed 25.12.2024). 76 On 8 February, 2011, the Guatemalan Constitutional Court ruled that Mayan Q’egchi’ communities had a valid claim to the contested land and ordered the Government of Guatemala to formally recognize the community’s collective property rights. HudBav Minerals and the Guatemalan government disregarded this ruling. 77 Imai etal. (2014), p.298. 78 Lexpert Business of Law, Ontario Superior Court Decision in Choc v. Hudbay Minerals paves way for defining responsibility of Canadian companies with foreign operations, 1 November 2013, available at https://www.lexpert.ca/archive/ontario-superior-court-decision-in-choc-v-hudbayThe Values and Limitations of Transnational Activism for Corporate Accountability… 120 committed in Canada, the same reasoning could apply to operations abroad. A subsequent trial had to evaluate the case on its merits and determine HudBay’s involvement in the events and the extent to which extra-territorial “duty to care” applied. Between 2011 and 2013, various Canadian NGOs, in particular Rights Action and Mining Injustice Solidarity Network (MISN), organised a series of events to garner public support for the lawsuits. In 2012, Mayan plaintiffs travelled to Canada to testify in court. In their view, the lawsuits empowered them to bring their antimining stances to Western attention. Wining was a secondary concern: being heard in Canadian courts was already important, since “other communities had not had the chance to get this far.”79 Rights Action and MISN also facilitated meetings between Guatemalan activists and Canadian Indigenous communities fighting against extractivist projects in their own territories. The two groups produced collective public statements and solidarity actions that condemned the role of the Canadian mining industry in displacing and harming Indigenous people in Guatemala, Canada and beyond. Canadian media covered the events.80 Such campaigns are crucial for ensuring that transnational litigations remain the subject of public discourse. However, since the majority of these law cases occur in Global North countries, NGOs often employ vocabularies that are familiar to Western audiences, but do not necessarily reflect the cultural and economic circumstances of the affected groups, particularly those of the Global South.81 Rights Action adhered to a similar strategic communications pattern. For instance, its director, Grahame Russell, utilised James Cameron’s blockbuster Avatar to discuss both Mayan culture and society and its resistance to extractivism: Like many resource extraction conflicts around the world, both historically and on-going today, this story of Canadian nickel companies trying to operate a mine in the Qeqchi territories of eastern Guatemala (starting with INCO in the 1960s and 70s, continuing with Skye Resources and HudBay after 2004) is like the documentary version of the Avatar movie. In Avatar, a powerful mining company brings a battalion of heavily armed men to a remote, far off place, uses extreme violence to forcibly remove the local indigenous people from their ancestral and sacred homelands, so as to get at a mineral that– once mined and processed– will sell for gargantuan profits, somewhere far away. In general terms, this is the story of nickel companies in Guatemala. Indeed, it is the story of many resource extraction struggles around the world, today and going back centuries.82 While such a discourse may be effective in triggering Western empathy, it is a crude rendering of Mayan society and cosmovision. Avatar is a Western fantasy, narrated in the language of American blockbusters. As Elise Marubbio observed, the movie minerals-paves-way-for-defining-responsibility-of-canadian-companies-with-foreign-operations/348931 (accessed 25.12.2024) 79 German Chub, quoted in “Defensora”. Available at https://rightsaction.org/videos (accessed 25.11.2024). 80 See for example Glynn (2013). 81 Gill (2009), pp.667–680. 82 Russel (2012). R. Grosescu 121 weaves together antimilitary imperialism, environmentalism, pro-Nativism and Indigenous sovereignty into a deceptively familiar critique of western manifest destiny and settler nations’ relationships with Indigenous people. […] The film remains trapped within its own formula, relying heavily on the standard Western generic tropes rather than a truly proNative or Native film focus on the results of imperialism on the earth and her peoples.83 In the end, Avatar promotes an “imperialist nostalgia for ecologically pure Natives whose subsistence lifestyle and spiritual connection to nature marks them as noble, primitive and exotic.”84 These critiques have also resonated with Guatemalan activists who have seen the film. For instance, during an interview in 2023, a Mayan lawyer responded with amusement when asked about the parallels between the film and their own culture: Well, in the end it’s a reproduction of Western stereotypes about us, Indigenous people in general. They probably think we still live in the trees and other similar stereotypes. There are some common aspects, such as the respect that we have for nature. But it is simplistic, because we don’t live like that. Like in Avengers, where there is this African population– also a sort of Indigenous group– but it’s not based on real African realities. To be honest, I don’t think that there is any movie– except for documentaries, but people do not watch documentaries– that really shows how we live: there is a lot folklorisation and fiction.85 In addition to the potential exoticisation of the Indigenous world, it is important to note that in Avatar, a Western soldier sacrifices himself for the survival of the Indigenous world. This narrative falls into the category of white saviourism,86 wherein Indigenous groups are depicted as requiring Western assistance and martyrdom to overcome capitalist extractivism. Similarly, in his depiction of Klippensteins, Russell drew inspiration from John Grisham’s best-selling legal thrillers87 that portray idealistic white lawyers and journalists working pro bono to defend poor, marginalised (often black) individuals and communities against repressive state authorities or corporations.88 While using American blockbusters and bestsellers to promote the Mayan cause might resonate with Western audiences, it also oversimplifies complex realities and reinforces a narrative of Indigenous dependency on Western support. As Makau Mutua has argued in his critique of Global North struggles for human rights, Western NGOs often provide a Eurocentric construct for the reconstitution of non-Western societies and peoples with a set of culturally biased norms and practices. Such narratives revitalise an international hierarchy of race and colour and can privilege white people as models and saviours of racialised subjects as victims/savages.89 Despite the problems underlying its campaign, Rights Action remained one of the very few NGOs to collaborate with anti-mining activists 83 Marrubio (2015), p.171. 84 Ibid. 85 Personal Interview with Adriana Sunin, Guatemala City, 21.09.2023. 86 On “white saviorism” in the Global South, see for instance Mathers (2022). 87 Russel (2012). 88 One such famous novel was A Time to Kill (1989), whose 1996 screen adaptation stared Samuel L.Jackson and Matthew McConaughey. 89 Mutua (2002). The Values and Limitations of Transnational Activism for Corporate Accountability… 122 in El Estor. As discussed in the previous section, other Western NGOs did not support the cause due to the fact the community’s protests had escalated into attacks on police officials and the mine’s security personnel. Ultimately, the impact of the Canadian lawsuits and the ensuing public campaigns was ambiguous. The Ontario Superior Court of Justice opened Canadian jurisdictions to transnational litigations regarding Canadian companies’ omission of the “duty to care” and the obligation to prevent their subsidiaries’ involvement in gross human rights violations abroad. This decision established a legal precedent that could potentially transform Canadian customary law.90 However, the Ontario court did not address the structural problems generated by extractivism, leaving unresolved fundamental political issues such as the precarious socio-economic and environmental conditions for Indigenous people in Guatemala, the decades-long dispute over land rights, and the inequalities that the mining industry often creates between the Global North and the Global South. As critical scholarship on criminal and civil litigation concerning corporate accountability has underlined, such trials generally have a limited effect in terms of rethinking and adjusting the structural inequalities of capitalism, extractivism, and of neoliberalism in particular. While they represent a genuine response to oppression, they continue to legitimise capitalist interests and narrate corporate violence as an exceptional act by a limited number of villainous companies.91 In connection to the previous point, in 2011 (as the law suits were winding their way through the Canadian court system), HudBay sold Fenix to Solway Investment Group—a company underwritten by Russian capital, headquartered in Switzerland. Violence surrounding mining operations continued in El Estor up to the writing of this chapter in 2024. The reasons for the sale remain unclear. According to Klippensteins, “the sale was prompted in part by the severe human rights issues at HudBay’s Fenix Project that dogged the company at every turn.”92 While the strong resistance of El Estor Mayan Q’eqchi’ communities, including the systematic reoccupation of land and the blockade of roads and access points to the mine may also have played a role, further research is needed to substantiate this claim. As the lawsuits against HudBay proceeded despite the sale of the company, other Canadian corporations continued their operations in Guatemala, with similar effects to those in the El Estor region.93 In 2014, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice’s previous decision provided the impetus for another complaint: Seven Guatemalan citizens filed a lawsuit against Tahoe Resources, seeking damages for injuries 90 For the assessment of strategic litigation see Jeßberger and Steinl (2022); Mégret (2023). 91 Baars (2019); Mehta (2024). See also Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky’s and Juan Cruz Goñi’s chapter in this book. 92 Declaration of Klippensteins Barristers & Solicitors, 10.11.2011, available at https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2011/08/10/1345584/0/en/Ontario-Lawsuits-Against-HudBayRegarding-Alleged-Human-Rights-Abuse-Continue-Despite-Sale-of-Fenix-Project.html (accessed 7.11.2024). 93 See for instance the conflicts generated by Tahoe’s operations in San Rafael Las Flores, or by Radius Gold in La Puya—both near Guatemala City—from 2011 onwards. R. Grosescu 123 sustained during a shooting outside the company’s Escobal silver mine in Sal Rafael Las Flores, near Guatemala City, in April 2013. In January 2017, the British Columbia Court of Appeal ruled that Canada courts had sufficient jurisdiction to proceed with the case, as a trial in Guatemala was considered futile. Although Tahoe Resources appealed the decision, the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear the case, clearing the way for a trial in Canada. In February 2019, Pan American Silver acquired Tahoe Resources and, in July 2019, reached a settlement with the Guatemalan plaintiffs. The company publicly apologised to the victims and the community, but did not accept any legal responsibility. Tahoe Resources also stated that “the resolution of the lawsuit does not impede in any way the ability of the victims to exercise their rights of protest related to the mine in the future.”94 Yet, operations continued. According to Guatemalan activists who supported the antimining resistance in San Rafael Las Flores, the case had little impact in Guatemala. Moreover, it did not put a stop to the company’s efforts to evade free and informed consultations regarding its operations on Indigenous lands.95 In October 2024, HudBay also opted to settle and pay compensation. As is customary in settled civil cases, the company refrained from acknowledging any legal responsibility. The specific terms of the agreement including the compensation amount also remain undisclosed.96 Hudbay’s decision to settle reveals that legal and public pressure can constraint companies to at least pay reparations in order to mitigate further legal and reputational risk. Notably, both Klippensteins and Rights Action successfully mobilised activists, researchers and journalists to support and publicise the Mayan anti-mining protests. However, for strategic communication purposes, the NGO translated the plight of Mayan communities for Western audiences through the oversimplified Avatar narrative, a blockbuster that epitomises the very capitalism that Indigenous communities are struggling to resist. Such an account might lead to misunderstandings among Western audiences about the Indigenous cosmovision and even to an autocolonisation of the Indigenous vocabulary in order to conform to Western (mis) perceptions. Furthermore, once the legal settlement was finalised, both Klippensteins and Rights Action severely adjusted their tone. During the early years of the litigation (2011–2013), they framed their campaign in terms of confronting corporate impunity and immunity, as well as fighting global inequality imposed by multinational corporations.97 In contrast, in 2024, both the law firm and the NGO announced that the “parties have agreed to a quiet period following settlement, to allow for everyone, and in particular the plaintiffs, to focus on getting on with their lives.”98 94 See Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, “Tahoe Resources Law Suit (Guatemala), available at https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/tahoe-resources-lawsuit-re-guatemala/ (accessed 11.04.2024). 95 Personal Interview with Julio Gonzalez, Guatemala City, 29.09.2023; personal Interview with Ana Eugenia Paredes, Guatemala City, 9.09.2023. 96 Mach (2024). 97 Russel (2012). 98 See https://rightsaction.org/ (accessed 30.10.2024). The Values and Limitations of Transnational Activism for Corporate Accountability… 124 While plaintiffs are indeed entitled to decide whether to accept or reject a settlement (especially considering that financial compensation often serves as an important aid in addressing acute economic challenges faced by impoverished societies), the shift in the Western discourse from assertive narratives of corporate accountability to “a quiet period” and the acceptance of a secret settlement only serves to support corporate interests, as noted by HudBay’s vice president of investor relations: “We are thankful that this settlement finally brings these matters to a close, and we note the settlement was reached without any admission of liability.”99 Such legal settlements also enforce the idea of “good” and “responsible” corporations, despite their systematic record of human rights violations. 5 Conclusion This chapter examined the values and limitations of transnational advocacy for corporate accountability in post-civil war Guatemala. While demonstrating the crucial role of transnational Western support for the very survival of anti-extractivist, human rights and environmental activism in Guatemala, the chapter also noted a series of limitations to this assistance. These limitations stem from Western militantism’s embeddness in a dominant liberal vocabulary that posits the importance of civil and political rights, while marginalising the relevance of economic rights and of alternative economic projects that challenge not only extractivist development, but the liberal capitalist system itself. This ideological stance has led to the development of criteria that severely limits the provision of transnational support for Guatemalan social movements: conditioning Western aid on pacifist and nonviolent resistance and gender representativity; promoting Western, liberal views on human rights and economics at the expense of sustaining Indigenous world visions; providing funding only to projects embedded in liberal economic thinking rather than in practices of reciprocity and solidarity, community-level action and selfmanagement as an alternative to capitalist relations of production and distribution. Moreover, in their pursuit of Western public support for Indigenous demands, NGOs from the Global North often constructed communication strategies that oversimplified and depoliticised economic conflicts unfolding in Guatemala. They filtered Indigenous claims through both a Western lens and Western legislation, and even through the narratives of Western blockbusters that epitomise the very capitalism against Indigenous communities in Guatemala have fought since 1996. These shortcomings demand a more responsible Global North activism that challenges not only the current international economic order and the status-quo of corporate impunity, but also Western cultural hegemony. Even if Indigenous worldviews and alternative economic development continue to be either ignored or seen at best as utopian visions (since they are nearly impossible to operationalise and hard to 99 Quoted by Mach (2024). R. 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Oxford University Press, Oxford Spalding RJ (2023a) The politics of implementation: social movements and mining policy implementation in Guatemala. Extract Ind Soc 13:1–11 Sveinsdóttir AG, Aguilar-Støen M, Bull B (2021) Resistance, repression and elite dynamics: unpacking violence in the Guatemalan mining sector. Geoforum 118:117–129 Torres Hernández SA (2017) Luchas por la defensa del territorio y los bienes naturales. Represión, Criminalización y judicialización en el Norte de Huehuetenango (2006-2016) UDEFEGUA (2021) Situación de personas, organizaciones y comunidades defensoras de derechos humanos. UDEFEGUA, Guatemala City Van de Sandt J (2009) Mining conflicts and Indigenous peoples in Guatemala. Cordaid, The Hague Willems L (2010) Mining and Indigenous peoples in Guatemala: the local relevance of human rights, MA thesis, University of Ghent Yagenova SV (2012) La Industria Extractiva En Guatemala: Políticas Públicas, Derechos Humanos, y Procesos De Resistencia Popular En El Período 2003-2011. FLACSO, Guatemala City Yagenova SV (2016) Guatemala: El Estado y procesos de resistencia popular frente a la industria extractiva 2003–2013. In: Cisneros P (ed) Política minera y sociedad civil en América Latina. Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales, Quito, pp95–146 Yagenova SV etal (2020) Casos de gestión de seguridad ambiental y humana, relacionadas con la industria minera de metales en las cuencas de los Ríos Cuilco, Motagua, Los Esclavos, y OstúaGuija, en la República de Guatemala. Madre Selva, Guatemala City Raluca Grosescu is a Lecturer in Politics at the National University of Political Science and Public Administration, Bucharest, where she leads the ERC-Consolidator Project “Transnational Advocacy Networks and Corporate Accountability for Major International Crimes.” Her work focuses on the history of international criminal law, memory politics and corporate accountability. Her latest publications include the monograph Justice and Memory after Dictatorship: Latin America, Central Eastern Europe and the Fragmentation of International Criminal Law (Oxford University Press in 2024) and the co-edited volume Socialism and International Law. The Cold War and its Legacies (Oxford University Press in 2024). Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercialNoDerivatives 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ byncnd/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this license to share adapted material derived from this chapter or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. R. Grosescu 136 Attorneys, on the other hand, form lawyers’ groups (bengodan). Often affiliated with the Japan Federal Bar Association and Japan Civil Liberties Union, these attorneys generally adhere to progressive ideas about Japan’s colonial and wartime past and conclude that Japan has not adequately atoned for the harm visited upon former imperial subjects (Koreans, Taiwanese), enemy civilians (Chinese, Filipinas), and enemy combatants (Chinese, American, Dutch and other Allied POWs). Lawyers’ groups devoted enormous amounts of time, money and effort to represent plaintiffs from Asia. Scouring Chinese villages, interviewing Taiwanese plaintiffs, and attending rallies in Busan, Japanese attorneys worked locally, nationally and transnationally to earn plaintiffs’ trust, collaborate with local lawyers and scholars, and devise litigation strategies.18 2.2 Investigation With vanguard, lawyers, and rearguard groups formed in Japan and plaintiffs’ home country (Taiwan, China, Korea, etc.), Japanese actors investigated claims in East Asia. They visited war sites, interviewed victims, spoke to experts, and consulted local lawyers. They gathered evidence: photographs, diaries, ordnance, and personal testimonials. By interviewing survivors, Japanese lawyers learned about the human rights abuses performed by Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Japan Steel, and other major corporations. These overseas trips uncovered the facts necessary to ground legal claims and built relationships of trust with victims, families, local lawyers, and activists in Asia. For many Asian plaintiffs, the idea of suing a Japanese corporation—in Japan, with the assistance of Japanese counsel—was hardly intuitive. Transnational human rights litigation, or transnational public law litigation, was alien to most people in the 1970s and 1980s.19 These forms of litigation have engrained themselves into the dockets, scholarly repertoires, and discourse of liberal democracies since the 1980s. Submitting human rights violations or historical injustices to the local judiciary would have confounded the average Korean or Chinese citizen for the relevant period (1970s to 1990s). While legal consciousness has risen in China, Korea, and Taiwan, the use of courts to seek redress from corporations for historical injustices remains, in many places, novel. 18 Tanaka (2005). Tanaka is a key architect in the war redress movement and the founder of the Association Chinese Forced Labor Committee. 19 Beth Stephens defines international human rights litigation as lawsuits that seek remedies “for the most egregious human rights abuses, as to which there is widespread consensus around the world, such as torture, genocide, summary execution, war crimes and forced labor.” Stephens (2002), p.488. Harold Koh delimits transnational public law litigation to tort lawsuits where plaintiffs seek “compensation, norm-enunciation, and deterrence through judicial declarations of international law violations, and more ambitious ‘institutional reform’ suits,” where they seek to reform U.S. foreign policy. Koh (1991), p.2368. T. Webster 137 Why, after all, would a Chinese forced labourer trust the legal system of his former enemy? Why would a Korean comfort woman, after decades of poverty, stigma and alienation, trust a Japanese attorney to defend her rights in Japan? Japanese activists had to build trust with their Asian clients, a multifaceted process involving repeated visits to Asian countries, support from plaintiffs’ compatriots (e.g., Chinese lawyers in China, Korean academics in Korea), and busy travel itineraries before and after their hearings in Japan. While months and sometimes years were needed, Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, and Filipina plaintiffs came to repose sufficient confidence in Japanese attorneys and activists so as to entrust their cases within the Japanese legal system. 2.3 Litigation Third, after ascertaining facts, collecting documentary evidence, and recording conversations, Asian victims sued in Japan. No longer passive victims of wartime human rights abuses or recipients of second-class treatment, foreign plaintiffs— assisted by Japanese lawyers, activists, and interpreters—initiated the proactive enterprise of formal rights assertion. For many, this was a new identity and novel activity. Many plaintiffs came from the most precarious strata of their home societies. Taiwanese veterans of the Imperial Japanese Army were long oppressed by the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang), which fought Japan during the war (1937–1945) and ruled Taiwan as an authoritarian dynasty from 1949 to 1987. Korean hibakusha knew little about their illnesses or how radiation exposure would affect them. They eked out marginal lives on the outskirts of Korean society. Chinese forced labourers were branded as traitors and “running dogs” of imperial Japan during various political campaigns, most harshly during the Cultural Revolution. Transnational litigation is, in several senses, a bridge: an emotional, logistical, procedural, and ritual set of linkages reinforced by civil society abutments in Japan on one side and Korea, China, and Taiwan on the other. The bridge places victims of humanity’s most destructive war on a path towards rights assertion, legal accountability, monetary compensation, and dignity reclamation. Litigation cannot, of course, guarantee that plaintiffs arrive at these destinations. Plaintiffs often express deep regret with the results of their lawsuits, especially in Japan. A few plaintiffs, however, enjoyed a measure of reconciliation, which derived from relations forged with Japanese academics, activists, and attorneys during the plaintiffs’ visits to Japan for hearings, celebrations, and memorials. They observed genuine demonstrations of Japanese remorse, communicated with Japanese activists dedicated to the cause of war redress, and actually extracted compensation and apologies in a few instances.20 20 Webster (2019). The Transnationalisation ofCivil Society inEast Asia’s War Redress Movement 138 The transnational litigation at issue in Asia’s war redress cases is both similar to and different from the attempts to hold former dictators to account in the West. The “Pinochet effect,” a prime example of the “Atlantic” model, refers to transnational efforts to hold authoritarian leaders criminally liable for human rights violations, in their individual capacity, outside of their home jurisdiction.21 By contrast, the “Pacific” model examined herein focuses on civil litigation, filed by foreign plaintiffs, against corporate and state defendants in their home jurisdiction. The legal claims, parties’ nationalities, and nature of the proceeding (criminal vs civil) thus vary widely between the Atlantic and Pacific models. Structurally speaking, Pacific plaintiffs challenged society’s strongest players—multinational corporations and the state—at home, a very significant set of obstacles to surmount. Atlantic activists, by comparison, prosecuted South American and African leaders in European courts. Both models thus used the judiciary of richer, more powerful states to preside over cases against parties from economically weaker states, but the equities of the two models differ significantly. Where East meets West, to mangle Kipling, is in the bottom-up mobilisation by grassroots legal actors. As Roht-Arriaza writes, “it was ordinary people, acting mostly on their own time and their own dime” who demanded justice for Pinochet and others in criminal courts.22 In the Pacific, a similar constellation of ordinary folks—lawyers, activists, and victims—collaborated to seek accountability from corporate and state actors. The bonds formed through domestic mobilisation in China, Korea, Taiwan, etc. ultimately enabled Japanese attorneys to represent Chinese and Korean forced labourers and hundreds of other war victims from the Asia-Pacific. 3 Background onWar Redress The transnational war redress movement first surfaced in East Asia during the 1970s. The first claimants came from Japan’s former colonies (Taiwan, Korea), not its former enemies (China, Philippines, US, UK). Having once been Japanese subjects, the first wave of redress seekers pressed equality-based claims against the Japanese state, demanding Japan provide them with the same benefits Japan provided to its own citizens. Under a 1952 law, for instance, Japan gave pensions, medical treatment and social benefits to veterans of Japanese nationality. Seeing their former colleagues so rewarded, Taiwanese veterans, who lost their Japanese nationality in 1952, banded together in Taiwan to demand similar treatment from Japan. With the assistance of Japanese activists and lawyers, Taiwanese veterans filed a seminal lawsuit in 1977.23 21 Roht-Arriaza (2006). 22 Roht-Arriaza (2006), p.224. 23 Deng Sheng etal. v. Japan, filed 13 August 1977. T. Webster 139 Similarly, under a 1958 law, survivors of the atomic bomb (hibakusha) qualified for pensions and medical treatment from Japan’s health ministry. In 1972, a Korean hibakusha illegally entered Japan to seek medical treatment for illnesses linked to radiation exposure. At the time, medical treatment for atomic—bomb survivors was far more developed in Japan than in South Korea. When the Fukuoka health minister refused to issue the necessary certificate, Plaintiff Son Jin-doo sued—the first war redress plaintiff in East Asia. Son enjoyed a string of court victories at trial, appellate, and supreme courts.24 Supporting Son during his time in Japan were various Japanese and Korean groups.25 The lawsuits of the 1970s and those of the present moment (1990-present) share common support among civil society actors. In the early 1970s, Taiwanese civil society was still constrained by the authoritarian leadership of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Nonetheless, a group of wounded Taiwanese veterans formed an unregistered, grassroots group to demand compensation from Japan. At the same time, groups in Japan mobilised around the issue of providing benefits to Taiwanese veterans. Two professors at Meiji University formed the Consideration Committee, which comprised over a dozen intellectuals from Tokyo, which ultimately supported the 17-year lawsuit filed by Taiwanese veterans in the Tokyo District Court. They raised money to fund the court costs, protested and ran signature campaigns, and meticulously recorded their activities, hearings, and legal developments in dozens of newsletters. Second, Japanese activists liaised with individuals and grassroots groups in other Asian jurisdictions. Attorneys visited Taipei, Seoul, Beijing and other cities to meet their clients, ascertain historical facts, and collect evidence of Japanese war crimes. They also had to earn the trust of local people, persuading their Asian interlocutors that litigation in Japan constituted a proper course of action. In this sense, attorneys also acted as brokers, uniting previously unconnected groups of Japanese activists and Asian victims and supporters. Throughout the war redress movement, the brokerage role has fallen primarily to Japanese attorneys, though activists without legal training (e.g. Hiroshi Tanaka, Ichiba Junko, Yano Hideki) have played an active role in developments from the 1990s onward. The first wave of war redress litigation, from the 1970s, mainly targeted the Japanese government.26 But even when state and corporate interests align, these actors conduct themselves according to a different set of rules. Corporations exercise flexibility that states cannot. The Japanese government, under the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), has consistently opposed war redress on almost all accounts. Indeed, one can trace the hardening of the LDP’s position to the profusion of war redress cases from the 1990s.27 Hard-right Prime Ministers such as Abe 24 Webster (2022a). 25 Duro (2018). 26 Two suits were filed against private actors: a Japanese bank and a Japanese insurance company. Webster (2025). 27 The leading conservative civil society groups include Nippon Kaigi (日本会議) and the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform (新しい歴史教科書をつくる会). Both groups oppose The Transnationalisation ofCivil Society inEast Asia’s War Redress Movement 140 Shinzo (2006–2007, 2012–2020), Taro Aso (2008–2009), and Suga Yoshihide (2020–2021) consistently downplayed carnage, denigrated victims, denied evidence, and dissembled about state involvement. Japanese companies, on occasion, adopted a more emollient approach. As the second wave of war redress litigation crested in the 1990s, Korean and Chinese plaintiffs filed some two dozen lawsuits against Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Sumitomo and other powerful zaibatsu that armed, financed and sustained Japan’s war machine.28 Plaintiffs demanded compensation and apologies for the forced labour they performed on behalf of these companies during the war. A small fraction of these lawsuits settled in response to pressure from shareholders, unfavourable media coverage, changes in public opinion, and the threat of transnational litigation in the United States.29 Japanese companies expressed remorse, showed creativity in designing remedies, and paid modest amounts of compensation. They conducted memorial ceremonies for deceased Korean forced labourers, apologised poetically to Chinese forced labourers, and erected monuments and museums around Japan. In less fraught times, corporations agreed to modest solutions. Because corporations enjoy greater flexibility than state actors—they need not win popular elections, for example—a more cooperative outcome is possible. Corporate positions can evolve in response to pressures, whether political (ties between large Japanese corporations and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party extend back decades), public (consumer boycotts, protests), judicial (damages awards, suggested settlements), international (International Labour Organisation, UN reports), and peer (other companies). Given changes in power, public opinion, and political pressure, corporate defendants have, at times, assumed a less oppositional stance vis-à-vis plaintiffs. When confronted with Chinese demands for compensation in the 1980s, Kajima Construction Company staked out a flexible position, only to drag its feet once negotiations focused on how much compensation they would have to pay. I will further present two case studies of transnational activism against Japanese corporations: one from China and one from Korea. Chinese forced labourers filed sixteen lawsuits against Japanese corporations, while Korean forced labourers filed eleven. These cases illuminate differences in transnational activism between authoritarian states (China, Korea in the 1970s) and liberal democracies (Japan, Korea now). Transnational activism never takes place in a vacuum. It is always subject to prevailing socio-cultural practices, political pressures, rights limitations, and organisational constraints. Informational constraints also influenced the selection. Trial support groups record their events in mesmerising detail but do not store that information in accessible places. Certain groups canonise themselves by publishing extensive compendia of their newsletters, verdicts, legal documents, and petitions. what they call a “masochistic view of history,” which acknowledges Japan as a perpetrator, not just a victim, of the Second World War. 28 Webster (2020). 29 Webster (2019). T. Webster 141 Other groups leave no trace at all. While the internet can be a valuable source of information, most groups fail to maintain their websites; broken links abound. By reading secondary materials in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, as well as newsletters from TSGs, media reports, and other materials, I trace the transnational activism of the first Korean (Park Chang-hwan) and first Chinese (Geng Zhun) forced labourers to seek corporate accountability from Japanese corporations. 4 Asia’s First Transnational Mobilisation forCorporate Accountability: Pak Chang-hwan v. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries 4.1 Mobilisation inKorea The origins of Pak’s lawsuit date to the late 1960s. In 1965, Japan and South Korea signed the Basic Treaty, reinstating diplomatic ties for the first time since World War II.While the instrument smoothed over relations between the estranged states, it enraged many Koreans and animated popular resistance to its ratification. Two hundred intellectuals, opposition politicians, and religious leaders constellated the “Committee against Humiliating Diplomacy with Japan.”30 Students rallied against the Treaty, with protests ricocheting across Seoul university campuses on June 3, 1965, and later throughout the country.31 Pupils at the country’s most elite institution, Seoul National University, entered a hunger strike. Despite popular objections, Tokyo and Seoul signed and ratified the Basic Treaty. In 1967, the Korean Atomic Bomb Victims Association (KABVA) was formed. This group did not challenge the Korean government, like the aforementioned Humiliation Committee. Instead, it advocated for “forgotten Koreans,” whose exposure to radiation during the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki produced a lifetime of anxiety, disease, and disfigurement. KABVA resembles the citizens groups (simin) that proliferated in the niches of Korean society at this time.32 The Association created linkages among the thousands of atomic survivors living in South Korea, advocated for better medical treatment, and later organised trips to Japan for medical treatment. In 1968, former forced labourers at Mitsubishi formed an offshoot of the Association. 30 The Committee against Humiliating Diplomacy with Japan (대일굴욕외교 반대투쟁위원회) consisted of Yun Posun (former president), Chang tae-sang (former prime minister), and other opposition leaders. 31 Lee (2014). Known as the June 3 Movement (6.3 항쟁), it asked Japan to apologise and compensate Koreans for 35 years of colonial oppression. Movement members also opposed Korean President Park Chung-hee’s waiver of the right to claim compensation against Japan in the 1965 Treaty. 32 Shin (2020). The Transnationalisation ofCivil Society inEast Asia’s War Redress Movement 142 In April 1974, Korean activist Jeong Chang-hee compiled a list of fellow conscripts who had worked for Mitsubishi. Jeong observed his former colleagues in the following way: “Conscripts were poor, and lived in mountainside huts on the outskirts of Seoul. After work, I would drag my tired feet up the mountains, and stop at each hut for a visit. This was how the Association formed.” Jeong recorded the names, addresses, dates of conscription, and worksites of each conscript. He later founded a grassroots entity, the Mitsubishi Conscript Association (MCA), to press claims against Mitsubishi.33 In Japan, Fukagawa Munetoshi—a poet and former worker at Mitsubishi—used Jeong’s list to launch negotiations with Mitsubishi. During the war, Fukagawa oversaw Korean conscripts as a foreman in Mitsubishi’s shipbuilding operations in Hiroshima. Himself a hibakusha, Fukagawa represented the MCA members in talks with Mitsubishi, forwarding their request for compensation and support.34 Mitsubishi replied We feel really bad about this. But as a corporation, we bear no duty to assist bereft families. In 1948, we deposited the unpaid wages of workers with the Hiroshima Ministry of Justice, and a list of Korean conscripts after the war. If you’d like to discuss compensation or other matters, please consult corporate headquarters.35 Thus began a campaign of deflection, disinformation, and denial that Mitsubishi would practice for decades. In August 1974, MCA members accepted Mitsubishi’s offer to negotiate at the corporate headquarters. Leading figures in Korea’s atomic bomb compensation movement—including Shin Yeong-su36 and Kwak Kwi-hoon37—visited Tokyo and Hiroshima at this time. But their meeting with Mitsubishi was perfunctory. The company proffered four defences against their request for compensation: (1) the present site in Eba-chô, Hiroshima was not the site of the atomic bombing, (2) since 33 Yonhap (2007). The group is referred to as both Mitsubishi Conscript Association (미쓰비시 징 용자 동지회) and Korean Atomic Bomb Victims Mitsubishi Conscript Association (한국 원폭피 해자 미쓰비시 징용자 동지회). It was likely affiliated with the Atomic Bomb Victims Association. The association’s foundation became a key legal issue. Both Pusan District and High Courts used the 1974 date as the starting point for the ten-year statute of limitations on Pak’s legal claims. The judgments use the second (longer) name. 34 Mitsubishi Hiroshima Trial Support Group (2010). 35 Ibid, p.51. 36 Kobayashi (2019). Shin Yeong-su (辛泳洙) founded KABVA in 1967 and ran it for forty years. As a former forced labourer and hibakusha, Shin spoke with broad authority on both issues. During his 1971 return to Japan, Shin lectured about the dire predicament of Korean hibakusha and sought the support of Japanese civil society. In August 1972, during Vice-Prime Minister Miki Takeo’s visit to Seoul, Shin raised the compensation issue with Japanese officials directly. Shin also inquired about Japan’s Atomic-Bomb Survivor Protection Law and the possible creation of medical facilities in South Korea. Miki did little in response. 37 In the 1990s and 2000s, Kwak was the lead plaintiff in two of the most successful cases of the redress movement. One case is credited with forcing the Japanese Health Ministry to withdraw a discriminatory regulation after 30 years and countless denials to foreign atomic bomb survivors. Webster (2022a). Chairman Cho Hanseok and Secretary-General Pak Hae-gun were also present. T. Webster 143 all wages were paid at the time, there are no “unpaid” wages, (3) other companies also used conscript labour, so Mitsubishi alone cannot bear responsibility, and (4) Mitsubishi had no duty to ensure safe passage back to Korea.38 Mitsubishi would refine, reconfigure, and reinforce these defences in the lawsuits of the 1990s and 2000s. But in the mid-1970s, transnational litigation against corporate actors for human rights violations would have been a rarity anywhere, especially in East Asia. Without a credible threat of litigation, MCA members had few options to press their claims. The MCA members pursued other forms of redress. Taking advantage of a 1974 verdict that found in favour of a Korean hibakusha, they successfully applied for certificates issued by Japan’s Health Ministry to enable medical treatment.39 They obtained theirs without litigation. On August 6, 1974, they participated in a ceremony to mark the 29th anniversary of the bomb. For the next several decades, the MCA remained active, liaising with Japanese groups and activists throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990s and 2000s, many MCA filed lawsuits in Japan and later in Korea. 4.2 Mobilisation inJapan Grassroots groups sympathetic to Asian war victims have proliferated in Japan since the 1970s. Hiroshima, the site of humanity’s most enormous war crime, attracts a disproportionately large number of peace activists. Indeed, many of Japan’s most active adherents in the transnational war redress movement reside in Hiroshima. But even outside of that war-torn city, Japanese intellectuals—including Tokyo-based Attorney Takagi Ken’ichi and Professor Onuma Yasuaki—sought to understand the damage that Japan had inflicted upon its Asian neighbours and compensate those injured by Japanese war crimes.40 The Trial Support Group (TSG) for the Mitsubishi Hiroshima Conscripted Atomic Bomb Survivors was formed on December 10, 1995.41 At the launch party, Korean conscripts and Japanese activists pledged to continue the fight against impunity of Mitsubishi and Japan.42 Plaintiff Hwang Jong-ho implored the audience, “Please answer me. Have I led a normal life? First, I was abducted, then tormented by Mitsubishi, and finally irradiated? When I returned home, I had no land to farm. How hard has my life been? What do Japanese people think?”43 Plaintiff Yang 38 Mitsubishi Hiroshima Trial Support Group (2010), p.52. 39 In 1974, the Fukuoka District Court found in favour of Son Jin-doo, the first Korean hibakusha to demand a health certificate (kenkô techô) from the Japanese government. Building on Son’s success, Shin successfully applied for a health certificate in Tokyo. 40 Webster (2022b). 41 Mitsubishi Hiroshima Trial Support Group (2010), p.59. 42 Ibid., p.60. 43 Ibid., p.60. The Transnationalisation ofCivil Society inEast Asia’s War Redress Movement 144 Gi-seong noted his advanced age and the large number of fellow hibakusha who had already died. He queried, prophetically, whether he would live to see the verdict of his own trial.44 Kim Sun-gil, a Korean hibakusha with litigation pendent against Mitsubishi in Nagasaki, also appeared.45 The TSG performed many acts in the repertoire of contention common in Japanese cause litigation. They organised protests and activities outside the Tokyo District Court after the case was filed in December 1995 and after subsequent hearings. On April 18, 1996, TSG members protested outside a Mitsubishi factory and a branch office of the Tokyo Mitsubishi Bank in Hiroshima. They waved signs that read “Mitsubishi: Pay the Unpaid Wages” and “Take Responsibility for Abducting Pak Chang-hwan.”46 The next day, before the first hearing, plaintiffs and activists called on Mitsubishi for one last attempt at settlement, but were turned away at the door.47 Later, when Judge Katô Makoto dismissed the case on March 25, 1999, TSG members stood outside the Hiroshima District Court and unfurled the customary “unfair verdict” banner.48 The TSG also engaged in more conventional modes of activism, inflected with a litigious twist. The group gathered some 87,000 signatures from Japanese citizens, who demanded a “just verdict” in the lawsuit. On June 25, 1996, activists delivered a five-foot stack—comprising some 87,000 pages—to the Hiroshima District Court.49 The reams of paper signified the broad support of Japanese citizens, quite apart from the Korean litigants and their supporters. The Hiroshima TSG also collaborated with other groups to amplify pressure on Mitsubishi. On June 13, 2002, members of TSGs in Nagasaki, Nagoya, and Hiroshima gathered outside Mitsubishi’s headquarters in Tokyo. Supporters held portraits of plaintiffs who had died during the litigation, conducted memorial services on their behalf, and set up family altars (saidan) on the sidewalk. Seven female plaintiffs, each wearing a sash that identified them as plaintiffs in the Nagoya trial, joined the Japanese activists in front of Mitsubishi headquarters. They carried a banner that read “It lives: my grudge,” using a Korean term (han) to conjure the deepseated and unremitting animosity borne by many Koreans against Japan.50 Next to 44 Ibid., p.61. Yang died in 2001, after the disappointing trial court decision but before the victorious appeal. 45 Kim filed the second corporate case in Japan. In 1992, he sued Mitsubishi Heavy Industry in Nagasaki District Court. Venue matters in Japan, as it does everywhere. Tokyo courts view war reparations claims dimly, dismissing the overwhelming majority. Lower courts in smaller cities (Fukuoka, Kyoto, Niigata, Yamaguchi), as well as those in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have issued partial or full rulings for plaintiffs. In 1991, Kim Kyeong-seok—no relation to Kim Sun-gil—filed the first lawsuit against a Japanese corporation for war redress in Tokyo District Court. His case was dismissed four years later. 46 Mitsubishi Hiroshima Trial Support Group (2010), p.66. 47 Ibid., p.67. 48 Ibid., p.70. 49 Ibid., p.68. 50 The word is 恨 or resentment, grudge, hatred. T. Webster 145 the seven plaintiffs was a table with portraits of deceased plaintiffs from the three lawsuits, festooned with flowers, fruit and other offerings. After the events, supporters split up: some conducted negotiations with Mitsubishi, while others headed to Kasumigaseki to meet members of the Koizumi Cabinet. When the Hiroshima High Court partially found for plaintiffs on January 19, 2005, the TSG took full advantage of the positive result. At a press conference at the Hiroshima Bar Association, Attorney Zaima Hidekazu discussed key features of the decision: (1) recognition of facts, (2) waiver of sovereign immunity, and (3) nullification of an “illegal” regulation to exclude foreign hibakusha.51 Japanese and Korean media, echoing Zaima’s formulation, repeated his characterisation of the case as a “landmark decision” that both acknowledged the state’s liability for “abandoning” foreign hibakusha and ordered the state to pay ¥1.2 million (US$12,000) to each plaintiff.52 The verdict did not, however, reverse the trial court’s decision to dismiss the case against Mitsubishi due to statutes of limitation.53 In a rare “victory lap” for trial support groups, a small delegation flew to South Korea that weekend. At the Seoul headquarters of the KABVA, attorneys and activists explained the ruling to Chairman Kwak Kwi-hoon, Jeong Sang-hwa, Kim Daebook, and other officials. After much exuberance (“We did it”, “Great job!”) and hugging, supporters, lawyers and plaintiffs went out to dinner. At the noraebang (karaoke bar) after dinner, Korean supporters sang a rendition of the Korean song “Let’s win, Korea.”54 The next day, TSG members visited Pyongtaek, the city where most plaintiffs lived. Plaintiff Hwang Jong-ho raised his fist to protest Mitsubishi’s exculpation. He posed more questions: “After sixty years of neglect, what can the statute of limitations possible mean? Mitsubishi cannot be forgiven.”55 The transnational mobilisation against Mitsubishi did not produce the result that Korean plaintiffs sought, at least as a matter of law. Mitsubishi certainly felt pressure from the lawsuit and related incidents of activism at its headquarters and office buildings in Japan. However, Japanese courts have viewed Korean forced labour as legal, in the narrow sense that the statutory basis for recruiting wartime Korean labour was Japan’s 1937 National Mobilisation Law. Japanese courts have taken a dimmer view of Japan’s use of Chinese forced labour, which lacked a legal basis and was often much more violent and coercive. As the next section suggests, 51 Japanese Community Party (2005). Since many conservative politicians and corporate officers reject the factual nature of Japan’s war crimes, factual recognition by Japanese courts provides a meaningful bulwark against denialism and revision. See Webster (2018). 52 The decision did not order Mitsubishi or the state to pay unpaid wages. See Daily Yomiuri (2005) (predicting the decision would have “substantial impact on other cases” as the “first time that a high court recognised the responsibility of the central government in compensation lawsuits”); Dong-A Ilbo (2005) (describing the ruling as the “first time that a Japanese court ordered compensation for atomic bomb victims overseas”). 53 Dong-A Ilbo (2005). 54 The song was written in the late Park Chung-hee era (1976), and performed at the Olympics, Asian Games, Korea-Japan World Cup (2002), and other sporting events. The song has a martial feel and nationalist message. 55 Mitsubishi Hiroshima Trial Support Group (2010), p.85. The Transnationalisation ofCivil Society inEast Asia’s War Redress Movement 249 Table 1 A comparison of the German LkSG and the French Loi de Vigilance Issue France Germany Personal scope of the law French companies with 5000 employees in France or 10,000in France plus abroad From 2023, companies with 3000 employees or more with a registered office/ branch in Germany, and from 2024, companies with 1000 or more employees Nature of due diligence obligations Mandatory vigilance plan that includes: risk analysis to identify, analyse, and categorise risks; procedures for regular evaluation of the situation of subsidiaries and suppliers; appropriate measures to mitigate risks or to prevent serious violations; a whistleblower mechanism for existing or emerging risks and, a system to evaluate the effectiveness of the implemented measures. More detailed than the French law and obliging companies to: establish a risk management system (section 4(1)); designate a responsible person within the enterprise (section 4(3); perform a regular risk analysis (section 5); issue a policy statement (section 6(2)); lay down preventive measures in own operations (section 6(3)), and vis-à-vis direct suppliers (section 6(4)); take remedial action (section 7(1) to (3)); establish a complaints procedure (section 8)); implement due diligence in regards to indirect suppliers where there is “substantiated knowledge” of violations (section 9)); document (section 10(1)); report (section 10(2)). Consequences of breach Injunctive relief and potential civil liability Fines, exclusion from public contracts, but no civil liability Administrative enforcement No public body responsible for administrative enforcement Enforcement through BAFA The key elements of the proposed bill included, inter alia:91 a wide scope of application covering companies which meet 2 out of 3 criteria—250 employees, an annual turnover of EUR 50 million or a balance sheet total of EUR 43 million (Article 3); inclusion of the entire financial sector within the ambit of the mHRDD law; an obligation for covered companies to prepare and implement a vigilance plan similar to the one required under the French Loi de Vigilance (Article 5); the creation of a supervisory authority, the Regulator, similar to BAFA under the LkSG (Article 6); a provision granting Luxembourgish CSOs legal standing to bring representative cases before the courts (Article 19); civil liability (Article 20); a reversal of the burden of proof (Article 21). Notably, in both the French as well as the German contexts, suggestions to include a reversal of the burden of proof were unsuccessful. In the French case, for instance, intense lobbying by powerful business associations resulted in the provision on reversal of the burden of proof being dropped from the final law.92 One notable difference between the Initiative’s draft and the French Loi de Vigilance, as well as the German LkSG, is the provision on stakeholder engagement. 91 Chamber of Deputies, “Proposal for a Law on the Duty of Vigilance of Companies in the Field of Sustainability”, https://www.chd.lu/fr/dossier/8217 (accessed 4 April 2024). 92 Cossart etal. (2017, p.317). Luxembourgish Civil Society Mobilising for Corporate Accountability: Prospects… 250 Whereas both the French and the German laws contain very vague meaningful engagement provisions, Article 5 (2) of the Luxembourg bill contained a very detailed provision on stakeholder consultation requiring covered companies to: publicly announce any calls for consultation; provide stakeholders with adequate information; and carry out consultation for a minimum of 4weeks. Such consultation would require covered companies to involve stakeholders in carrying out their risk analysis and coming up with suitable measures to prevent, mitigate and remediate violations of human rights and the environment. One potential practical effect of mandating meaningful engagement in this way is the rebalancing of otherwise asymmetrical power relations between powerful companies and vulnerable rightsholders by allowing the latter to participate in due diligence processes.93 The Luxembourgish due diligence Bill was tabled in the Chamber of Deputies on 16th May 2023. Subsequently, in June 2023, the mHRDD bill was debated in the Committee on the Economy in the Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies.94 Representatives of two political parties, Déi Lénk and the Piratepartei, had agreed in advance to present the bill in Parliament in association with the Initiative. The two speakers, Swen Clement and Nathalie Oberweis, explained that the bill had been drafted jointly with the Initiative pour un devoir de Vigilance and outlined the purpose of the law as enhancing more responsible business conduct in Luxembourg.95 During the debate, one member of the Christian Social People’s Party (CSV) party, MP Laurent Mosar, opposed the bill arguing that a European rather than a national response was the better approach and repeated the oft-expressed fear that such a law would unduly burden companies operating in Luxembourg and expose them to additional costs and competitive disadvantage.96 In response, MP Charles Margue from the Green party argued that the defence of human rights takes precedence over the economic costs of such measures and thus welcomed mHRDD initiatives. The meeting ended with opinions divided on whether Luxembourg should enact an mHRDD law before an EU Directive on the same topic is adopted, a mood which seems to prevail to date. As the above analysis clearly demonstrates, CSO coalitions such as the Initiative pour un devoir de Vigilance can only go so far in contributing to the legislative processes surrounding mHRDD laws. Other than drafting model laws, putting public pressure on governments to enact due diligence laws, and even forging alliances with the business sector, there is not much more that CSOs can do in this context. The Luxembourg experience highlights the reality of how political will and government support are indispensable elements in the quest to “harden” the human rights and environmental obligations of TNCs.97 93 Lichuma (2023). 94 Chamber of Deputies, “Minutes of the meeting held on 15 June 2023”, https://wdocs-pub.chd.lu/ docs/exped/0141/024/282244.pdf (accessed 10 January 2024), pp.3–8. 95 Ibid 96 Ibid. 97 Macchi and Bright (2020, pp.218–219). C. O. Lichuma 251 4 Final Reflections: ALuxembourgish mHRDD Law intheShadow oftheEU CSDDD andtheContinuing Importance ofCivil Society Mobilisation inEnhancing Responsible Business Conduct 4.1 Learning fromEach Other: Comparing andContrasting theExperiences ofGerman andLuxembourgish CSOs As previous sections of this chapter have illuminated, to a large extent, CSOs operating in the area of mHRDD laws seem to employ similar tactics in their struggles to convince national governments to adopt such laws. The similar experiences of the German Initiative Lieferkettengesetz and the Luxembourgish Initiative pour un devoir de Vigilance allow us to distil a number of common strategies in this regard. First, in order to amplify their voices and widen their resource pools (human, as well as financial), such CSOs do not act individually. Instead, they combine in order to form a dedicated intersectoral network: the Initiative Lieferkkettengesetz, in the case of Germany and the Initiative pour un devoir de Vigilance, in Luxembourg. This allows the involved CSOs to come together and speak with a unified voice while simultaneously taking advantage of the economies of scale. In both cases, the use of a dedicated website devoted to updating readers on all the actions undertaken by the network helped cement the role of the respective Initiatives in the national due diligence debates. Second, the most powerful tool that both Initiatives wielded was the continuous use of publicity to advance their respective causes and generate attention. Both the Initiative Lieferkettengesetz as well as the Initiative pour un devoir de Vigilance aggressively publicised their demands for a due diligence law. This was done on their websites, through press briefings, newspaper articles, etc. To some extent, publicity shapes public perception, and public perception is, in turn, capable of influencing political action. Thus, publicity by CSOs around the need for an mHRDD law not only increases public awareness about the problem of a lack of corporate accountability but also puts governments under sustained pressure to act. Granted, valid concerns may be raised about such media-centred political activism and accompanying publicity. For instance, Sarah Sobieraj highlights three possible concerns in this regard. Firstly, where activism is media-centred, the focus on public relations may result in participants being viewed as potential liabilities to be managed rather than as trusted peers able to make valuable contributions to the cause being advocated. Secondly, a media campaign requires actors to speak in a unified voice. This implicitly suppresses disagreement while privileging consensus. Thirdly, political and philosophical discussions may be marginalised in favour of more logistical organisation geared towards ensuring successful public campaigns.98As Sobieraj cautions, “the relentless concentration on impression management that 98 Sobieraj (2011, p.136). Luxembourgish Civil Society Mobilising for Corporate Accountability: Prospects… 252 accompanies the pursuit of media attention” could result in suppression of internal dialogue.99 Nevertheless, despite these concerns, this contribution posits that media campaigns, such as those conducted by CSOs advocating due diligence laws, can be powerful tools when properly managed. Third, in both cases, the CSO coalitions drafted a model mHRDD law to help augment their positions. The model laws in question were quite ambitious in many respects, including by: having a relatively large scope that would have brought more companies within the ambit of the law; creating a civil liability regime that would have allowed victims of violations to bring civil suits on the basis of the mHRDD law; a reversal of the burden of proof, which would have worked in favour of complainants and against covered companies. Ultimately, however, the German law deviated in some respects from CSOs’ demands, leading the Initiative Lieferkettengesetz to decry the law for being “weak” and “having gaps.” To be fair, given the highly political process of drafting an mHRDD law and the many conflicting interests at play, perhaps the best strategy for CSOs is to aim for the moon and maybe land on the stars. Which is to say, the model mHRDD laws they put forward should be as ambitious as possible so that even if some provisions are lost within the inevitable political compromises that follow, at least some CSOs’ suggestions will remain in the end. Fourth, in debates surrounding the enactment of an mHRDD law both in Germany as well as in Luxembourg, constant references were made to developments in other EU countries, such as France and the Netherlands, as well as to the EU progress towards a binding Directive. These were deliberate strategies geared towards appealing to legislators not to be left behind. The norm diffusion of binding HRDD obligations across Europe is a useful selling point for CSOs advocating a due diligence law. The power of the “see what our neighbours are doing card” cannot be overstated. Notably, this strategy of highlighting developments in comparable states in order to call for progress nationally is not a uniquely European strategy. For instance, within the East African context, Kenya was the first country to adopt a NAP on business and human rights.100 This has been used as a rallying point to call for similar developments in Uganda (which now has a NAP in BHR) and Tanzania.101 Similarly, the preferred Japanese regulatory strategy for BHR has, so far, been guidelines on responsible business conduct.102 This has spurred calls for similar developments in Taiwan, for example.103 Fifth, it is clear that mHRDD laws cannot be effective tools to shape corporate behaviour and ensure redress for the victims of corporate human rights and 99 Ibid 100 Republic of Kenya, “National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights: For the Implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (2020–2025)” (2019), https://statelaw.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/NATIONAL-ACTION-PLAN-ONBUSINESS-AND-HUMAN-RIGHTS-NOV-2020.pdf (last accessed 15 June 2024). 101 Houerbi and Muchunguzi (2021, p.1, 4). See also Rasul Minja’s chapter in this volume. 102 Ito (2024). 103 Ling (2024). C. O. Lichuma 253 environmental violations without the genuine acceptance of covered companies. To this end, one particularly noteworthy strategy employed by the Initiative Lieferkettengesetz and the Initiative pour un devoir de Vigilance has been to orchestrate the support of companies and other economic actors for mHRDD laws. This has culminated into “Business Statements of Support” in both cases, sending a strong message to both the government as well as to other companies that it is not only CSOs who are interested in due diligence laws. At the same time, however, care should be taken not to sacrifice more stringent mHRDD laws’ design upon the altar of building coalitions with business entities. As clearly illustrated by the German context, the business support for the due diligence law came at the expense of a civil liability provision in the final LkSG.104 Sixth, both the Luxembourgish CSOs as well as their German counterparts have made use of existing NAP in BHR processes to agitate for binding mHRDD laws. Even though NAPs have been on the receiving end of criticism for being “cosmetic devices that states use to deflect attention from persisting abuses and needed regulation,”105 they can be useful markers of progress towards corporate accountability. As the German example highlights, where an NAP contains monitoring provisions, this becomes a formidable tool to assess whether companies are voluntarily complying with HRDD obligations. Where the monitoring reveals a failure to act, as was the case in Germany, this may be an additional catalyst for binding obligations. As O’Brien has observed in this regard, NAPs may “trigger government commitments to implement business and human rights standards, so delivering better ‘vertical’ alignment of national laws, policies, and institutional practices with international commitments.”106 In fact, as the German experience confirms, NAPs may be said to be “pre-regulatory, in as much as they may lead to or create conditions encouraging the adoption of substantive policies, legislation or other measures.”107 At the end of the day, however, no matter how effectively CSOs deploy the above tactics in their quest for mHRDD laws, one major challenge persists. In order for due diligence laws to be enacted and implemented, there must be political will and government support for the cause. As Part 2 has illuminated, the German experience is instructive in this regard. Without the support of the SPD and the CDU/CSU— and a coalition agreement that committed to coming up with more intrusive HRDD measures depending on the results of the NAP monitoring, it may very well be the case that the LkSG would not have been enacted. Or at least that its enactment would have taken a little more time. Luxembourg has only had two NAPs in BHR so far (2018–2019 and 2020–2022), and, to date, the government has not committed itself to implementing a due diligence law if the NAP monitoring process yields a dismal performance by companies. Thus, as the final section will outline, the tactic that might work best for Luxembourgish CSOs now is placing pressure on the 104 Weihrauch etal. (2023, p.919). 105 O’Brien etal. (2021, p.72). 106 O’Brien etal. (2016, p.121). 107 O’Brien etal. (2021, p.94). Luxembourgish Civil Society Mobilising for Corporate Accountability: Prospects… 254 governmentto tranpose the recently adopted EU CSDDD into the Luxembourgish context as ambitiously as possible. 4.2 A Note onTransnational Cooperation Between Global North andGlobal South CSOs intheArea ofmHRDD Laws Due diligence laws operate extraterritorially and are intended to influence the actions of suppliers in the Global South. Yet, Global South actors are not properly represented, both in the processes preceding the enactment of due diligence laws as well as in the implementation of such laws.108 Valid questions may be raised about whether Global North CSOs are doing enough to include Global South CSOs in these mHRDD laws transnational advocacy networks and the conversations surrounding the development and implementation of binding due diligence obligations. Even though many Global North CSOs partner with Global South CSOs, the mere existence of such partnerships does not always mean that the interests of Global South rightsholders are properly considered and factored into the decisions taken.109 This contribution argues that more must be done to ensure that Global South CSOs and other grassroots organisations have a seat at the table and are able to actively and directly participate in processes surrounding mHRDD laws. It is not enough for Global North CSOs to speak on behalf of Global South CSOs, individuals, and communities. Recognition of the agency and autonomy of Global South stakeholders in matters that concern them necessarily requires a less Eurocentric transnational advocacy network. 4.3 Conclusion: TheEU Corporate Sustainability dueDiligence Directive andaLingering Role forCSOs Advocating mHRDD Laws For the EU CSDDD, the year 2024 got off to a tumultuous start.110 For some months, the future of the Directive hang in the balance as a result of the 11th-hour backtracking of countries such as Germany, France and Italy, which threatened the compromise agreement that had been reached by the European Council and the European Presidency in December 2023.111 This compromise agreement included now deleted 108 Lichuma (2023, p.764). 109 Sénit and Bierrmann (2021, pp.581–591). 110 Blenkinsop (2024). 111 EU Council (note 69). C. O. Lichuma [Document text truncated for crawler view.]