The Oxford Handbook of Transitional Justice
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2024
Authors: Leigh A. Payne, Gabriel Pereira and Laura Bernal-Bermúdez

The Business of Transitional Justice

Scholars and practitioners have referred to corporate accountability as the missing piece of the transitional justice puzzle. This chapter suggests that is not entirely the case. Truth commissions and human rights judicial processes have held economic actors accountable for complicity in violations during authoritarian rule and armed conflicts around the world. What is missing, however, is the visibility of these processes, an understanding of how they have occurred from below in the global south, and against the strong veto power by business. This chapter fills in that missing puzzle piece using analysis of an original Corporate Accountability and Transitional Justice (CATJ) data base. It uses the analogy of Archimedes’ Lever to reveal how weak actors (victims in the global south) with the right tool (institutional innovation in blending domestic and international human rights norms) can lift up the weight of corporate accountability, from under the powerful pressure from economic veto players, particularly in favorable political environments.

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