IICSAL   26686
INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGACIONES SOCIALES DE AMERICA LATINA
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Connections between academic research and legal prosecution in Argentina regarding cases of corporate responsibility in human rights violations during the 1976-1983 dictatorship
Autor/es:
BASUALDO, VICTORIA
Lugar:
Oxford
Reunión:
Conferencia; Justice for Transnational Human Rights Violations: At the Crossroads of Litigation, Policy and Scholarship; 2019
Institución organizadora:
University of Oxford, Latin American Centre
Resumen:
This paper has the main aim to analyze the relationship between academic research and legal proceedings regarding cases of business responsibility in human rights violations perpetrated during the 1976-1983 dictatorship in Argentina. The paper will have three main sections. First, it will briefly analyze the presence of the issue of labor repression and of business responsibility in human rights violations during different historical periods: 1) the first years of the transition to democracy during the 1980s, 2) the 1990s, a time of neoliberal reforms and impunity, 3) the period after the 2001-2002 crisis until 2015, during which the trials regarding human rights violations were reopened and multiple institutions and policies were enacted, and 4) from December 2015 to date, when the Macri administration introduced significant changes in human rights policies and institutions. Second, the paper will analyze one specific case to illustrate the potential as well as the tensions and difficulties of the relationship between academic scholarship and legal prosecution: the so-called ?Ford? case, a criminal trial that analyzed the responsibilities of a military leader (Santiago Omar Riveros) and two Ford Motor Argentina managers (Héctor Sibilla and Pedro Müller) in the human rights violations perpetrated against 24 former workers and shop-stewards of Ford Motor Argentina, who were kidnapped, tortured and imprisoned between 1976 and 1977. The oral proceedings of this case developed between December 2017 and December 2018 and the judges unanimously found the three accussed guilty of these violations and sentenced them to 15 (Riveros), 12 (Sibilla) and 10 (Müller) years in prison. This case is particularly useful to illustrate the complexity of analyzing business responsibility in human rights violations in empyrical terms, and the importance of the academic contributions to face the challenges in conceptualization and legal prosecution.Third, it will very briefly analyze some of the most important contributions made from the academic field both in terms of the historical analysis of this problem, and in terms of conceptualization of the emerging patterns regarding business responsibility in human rights violations in Argentina during the last dictatorship.