[PDF] Corporate Legal Accountability Annual Briefing: Executive Summary
When a company takes your land without compensation, pollutes your water, or brings in private militia to guard an oil well who start to rape and abuse the women of a local community, you should have the right to ensure it stops, and to get your livelihood restored. Your human rights should be respected whether you are rich or poor, irrespective of your geographic location. This ‘Access to Remedy’ constitutes one of the three pillars of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights...Based on our unique overview and data, three realities for victims seeking justice for corporate abuses are inescapable: 1) Existing venues for extraterritorial claims are closing, and governments of countries where multinationals are headquartered do not provide sufficient access to judicial remedy for their companies’ abuses; 2) Legal harassment of human rights defenders is on the rise for those working to hold businesses accountable for human rights abuse; 3) New, but limited, venues for corporate human rights claims are emerging as victims seek new paths to access to judicial remedy...