TNCs in the dock: Corporate complicity in human rights abuses in Latin America.

MARCELO SAGUIER

Corporate Social Responsibility in Latin America

UNCTAD - Conferencia de Naciones Unidas para el Comercio y el Desarrollo

Lugar: Ginebra; Año: 2010; p. 7 - 99

The Permanent Peoples Tribunal (Tribunals) process has positioned grassroots struggles against corporate power in Latin America. As international non-legal fora, the Tribunals expose patterns of corporate non-responsibility towards human rights. In addition, the Tribunals also contribute to the transformation of international norms and institutions for regulating transnational business. This is done by challenging the legitimacy of the voluntary principle at the core of the corporate social responsibility approach. Some of the cases presented at the Lima and Colombia Tribunals evidence regimes of impunity, which link public institutions and corporations within and across national borders. The PPT process in Latin America has also created advocacy opportunities which add to the unification of common criteria to monitor cases of TNC rights violations, generate and systematise evidence, and develop a common legal rationality among regionally located social organisations.