Lawyers' insights on corporate legal accountability: Gearóid Ó Cuinn, GLAN (Global Legal Action Network)
1. What are the biggest challenges you face in your corporate legal accountability work?
One of our biggest challenges is establishing facts and investigating corporate enterprises.
Connecting with affected communities in a timely manner. Often, we rely on media reports of overseas violations which makes our ability to offer assistance a little unstructured.
2. What key opportunities do you see for promoting corporate legal accountability (at the national, regional or international levels)?
Connecting investigators with affected communities who are working with legal teams in other jurisdictions to secure accountability.
Economic crimes are closely tied to human rights violations and provide a promising route for indirectly dealing with accountability.
3. What key lesson(s) have you learned in your efforts to advance corporate legal accountability?
It is challenging to fund and patience is required.
It is important to work closely with affected communities to support their pre-existing efforts and work with them to generate impacts beyond the legal sphere.
It is worth investing in communicating this work in an accessible and impactful way to amplify your efforts.