Imperialism, Business & Human Rights
Business and Human Rights could arguably be described as a counter-hegemonic project. The field emerged to counter the governance and accountability gaps generated by the power asymmetry between multinationals, often described as neo-colonialist global actors, and people detrimentally impacted by their corporate activities. Businesses are often considered as “the problem”, while human rights would be “the solution” to addressing inequalities determined by the current global economic system. However, human rights are not themselves exempt from a neo-colonialist or Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) critique, which makes human rights law a questionable saviour of businesses.
Research question
The provisional research question is: How could we reconceptualize the business and human rights field around people and planet taking into account its imperial legacies?
In order to address this pivotal question, the project will investigate the business and human rights field.
The business & human rights field
The business and human rights field could be understood as part of human rights law, especially if one compares it to its predecessor, corporate social responsibility (CSR). CSR has been extensively criticised for being over-focused on the economic rationales that push companies to consider the social dimension of their investments and economic activities. This economic focus enabled businesses to capture the CSR discourse as part of their business model. This approach can arguably be conceptualised as imperialist because, despite CSR, businesses are able to maintain and reinforce their power on pivotal natural resources, labour and capital.
In an attempt to address these criticisms, business and human rights reconceptualised the problems generated by the detrimental impact that corporations have on people and planet around human rights law. However, once it became clear that the field should focus on legally binding obligations, the issue was who shall meet such human rights obligations. The answer provided so far has univocally been states, re-proposing the state-centric logic of public international law. According to this paradigm, the state is considered at the same time as the main perpetrator of and protector against human rights abuses, while people are depicted as right holders relevant to the field in so far as states recognise their rights. Critical legal scholars identified such a state-centric approach as part of the imperialist legacy of public international law that human rights not only failed to address but also contributed to reinforcing.
As a result, the business and human rights field combines two imperialist legacies: the CSR legacy because it re-proposes non-binding responsibilities for corporations, depicting businesses as passive bystanders of states' regulatory power while overlooking their economic, political and legal power; and the human rights legacy because it reproduces the weaknesses of a state-centric field that conceptualises people as mere victims of state power. Both imperialist legacies originate, at least to a certain extent, in the Western-centric approach the business and human rights field inherited. Both human rights and businesses are founded on Western philosophical and historical foundations. Both foundations have been going through a process of globalisation that has attempted to transform human rights into “universal” neoliberal values and businesses into “global” economic actors. But, despite this global transformation, both human rights and businesses remain Western-centric and perpetrate, to a certain extent, the imperialistic logic they arguably were meant to address by becoming global.
The research project
Against this background, this research project will argue that, in order to liberate the business and human rights field from its imperial legacies, it is necessary to reconceptualize it around non-Western foundations of human rights and businesses. These alternative foundations can be found by investigating methodologies, approaches, and philosophies originating in the Global South and, in particular, from indigenous cultures. They are often centred around empathy, solidarity, and nature. They challenge the state centrism of human rights and propose alternative approaches that could help refocus the business and human rights field around people and the environment detrimentally impacted by corporate activities.
Principal investigator
Dr. Dalia Palombo, Tilburg University, Assistant Professor of Human Rights Law
Team (work in progress)
The principal investigator is in the process of recruiting a research team. A call for applications is available at https://tiu.nu/22209
Output
The main project output will be a monograph.
Funding
The project is funded by a generous Starter Grant, awarded by the Minister of Education, Culture, and Science (OC&W), Government of the Netherlands.