Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CORPACCOUNT (Transnational Advocacy and Corporate Accountability for Major International Crimes)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2023-05-01 al 2024-10-31
The role of transnational corporations in human rights abuses and environmental destruction has been well documented, ranging from fueling wars and keeping authoritarian regimes afloat, to the direct use of forced labor, attacks against trade unionists and human rights activists, to complicity in torture and other mass crimes. In the current context of hyper-globalized economies and ongoing armed conflicts, in which powerful transnational corporations operate and pursue lucrative interests, it is important to understand how people and networks mobilize across the globe to prevent and sanction corporate involvement in human rights violations; and how states, international organizations, and businesses themselves respond to such initiatives or propose their own approaches. CORPACCOUNT aims to provide crucial insights into the transnational mobilizations and counter-mobilizations for holding multinational corporations and their representatives accountable for complicity in major international crimes and the extreme degradation of the environment, since the 1970s. It seeks to innovate the current literature on corporate accountability through three interconnected objectives: 1) It delivers a critical sociological analysis of both advocacy movements and business groups and associations involved in transnational accountability campaigns. 2) It analyzes various ideas and strategies of dealing with corporate violence and examines the socio-political conditions under which they succeed in enforcing accountability. 3) It explores how different visions of human rights, economic globalization, development, and democratization shape accountability strategies. The project focuses on four types of transnational campaigns that span across the Global South and the Global North and on the resulting response from states, international organizations, and business groups: a) advocacy for criminalizing corporate misconduct in international/regional treaties; b) litigations; c) legislative initiatives for prohibiting trade with and investment in dictatorial settings; and d) boycotts. Through its global geographical scope, the diversity of pro-accountability actors and business groups involved, and the plurality of repertoires and arenas of transnational activism, the project examines both the convergence of an international
During the first 30 months, the team members focused their research on transnational mobilizations – and subsequent corporate accountability strategies - of civil society organizations (CSOs), including global networks and national CSOs from Global South countries. We consulted archives and libraries and conducted interviews in Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala, and South Africa. We directly observed UN forums and and events organized by CSOs and business organizations. Through critical discourse analysis of different documents and interviews, we grasped a variety of approaches towards corporate accountability, identified relations of both cooperation and competition between different CSOs, and critically assessed power asymmetries between CSOs from the Global North and the Global South. This research resulted in the volume Raluca Grosescu & John Dale (eds.), Re-Envisioning Corporate Accountability for Human Rights Abuses: Civil Society and Transnational Action (Springer, forthcoming 2025) where the team members contributed five chapters, the introduction and the conclusion. We also worked on a collective article on different ideological approaches to corporate accountability, to be submitted for review in 2024. The team created the “Civil Society Active in Corporate Accountability Dataset,” which provides the first quantitative information on a global sample of 290 CSOs engaged in corporate accountability, including the organizations’ structures, aims, repertoires of actions, and funding. The dataset is freely available on Mendeley Data (1) 2024. Two articles interpreting the dataset are currently under review. The team organized its first major conference: twelve selected contributions on civil society, corporate accountability and transnational action will be published in the above-mentioned edited volume co-edited by the PI. We also organized three intersectoral workshops with over 100 human rights activists, judicial officials, and academics, to discuss obstacles and opportunities to advance corporate accountability. They resulted in the first guidelines for corporate accountability in Latin America, drafted in collaboration with Andhes Argentina, Oxford University, and prosecutors from the Southern Cone (forthcoming 2024) & a special issue on corporate accountability, cartographies and photographs, to be published in 2025, in collaboration with FLACSO Argentina. Moreover, we participated with 22 individual presentations at different conferences.
The volume Raluca Grosescu & John Dale (eds.), Re-Envisioning Corporate Accountability for Human Rights Abuses: Civil Society and Transnational Action (Springer, forthcoming 2025) is the first collection to critically explore the role, limitations, and internal fragmentation of social activism for corporate accountability (CA) at a global level. It is a breakthrough volume that – for the first time: (1) examines transnational mobilization connecting Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas; (2) focuses on a wide range of corporate accountability strategies and an expansive array of civil society organizations (CSOs) participating in CA; (3) gathers contributions by leading scholars from around the world and from diverse disciplines; (4) emphasizes the Janus-faced paradigm of transnational activism for corporate accountability. Two other edited volumes (planned for 2026) will examine business attitudes towards corporate accountability and the assessment of various methods and strategies of corporate accountability and the conditions that favour or impede success: from civil and criminal trials, to boycotts, divestment campaigns; truth commissions etc. The chapters authored by the CORPACCOUNT team members provide breakthrough insights into transnational mobilizations for corporate accountability in Argentina and Guatemala, a comparative socio-historical analysis of major global civil society networks involved in the drafting of the UN Treaty on business and human rights, and the first quantitative analysis of a large number of CSOs engaged in corporate accountability. The Civil Society Active in Corporate Accountability Dataset is the first source for quantitative data on 290 CSOs active in the field of corporate accountability. It includes information on the organizations’ structures, aims, political values, repertoires of actions, partners and funding. The dataset is available on the free repository Mendeley Data (1) 2024 and is thus available to other researchers. The Guidelines “Pautas para la investigacion judicial de actores economicos por su participacion en crímenes contra la humanidad,” are the first to a) provide information on national and international legislations that can be used in Latin America in the field of corporate accountability; b) present different prosecutorial strategies from South American countries. As such, the guidelines will represent an important tool for legal actions and a benchmark for scientific analysis.