Rights-Compatible Remedy: A Response to ERI
This post is a response to a critique of our public assessment of a grievance mechanism (the Framework) at Barrick Gold’s mine in Porgera, Papua New Guinea. (Executive Summary; Full Report.) We include it here because we will delve in some detail into the issue of compensation under international human rights law, particularly as it pertains to Guiding Principle 31(f), which provides that operational-level grievance mechanisms should ensure that “outcomes and remedies accord with internationally recognized human rights.”
Marco Simons of EarthRights International (ERI), a law firm and advocacy group, recently published a blog post criticizing Enodo’s assessment on a few fronts: (1) our alleged miscalculation of equitable damages for survivors of sexual violence under international human rights law; (2) our critique of certain international stakeholders for potentially endangering survivors of sexual violence; (3) our alleged blaming of survivors for requesting cash compensation; and (4) our alleged inherent lack of independence. The first of these criticisms may be the result of our decision not to provide an intricately detailed explanation of what we, perhaps mistakenly, believed were undisputed principles of international law. I hope to remedy any lack of clarity in this post. The second two criticisms, I fear, reflect a misunderstanding of what we have written. The last criticism relies, rather troublingly, on innuendo. I will address each issue in turn, with the bulk of this post devoted to compensation under international law...