Unlocking the Agency of Rights Holders in Private Remedy Mechanisms for Business Harm

The year 2017 was a landmark year for the debate on access to remedy for business-related harm. The apex United Nations body concerned with the issues of human rights and business recognized the need to place rights holders at the heart of remedies. In spite of this objective, the predominant way to look at rights holders was and remains as mere recipients of remedies. This involves not only limiting their agency to the final stages of remediation, but also shifting increasing authority on corporations as providers of remedy when the state is unwilling or unable to do so. Against this backdrop, the project aims to provide a fresh account of the agency of rights holders - an account recognizing the potential for rights holders to contribute to the establishment of remedy mechanisms, as well as to the delivery of remedies. This objective requires a shift away from identifying transnational private remedy mechanisms exclusively with the corporate-established ones. Recent rights-holder-driven initiatives emphasize the agency of communities and other affected stakeholders to remedy violations of rights by business operations. By putting the spotlight on this practice, my objective is to revise and extend the current understanding of transnational remedy mechanisms for business harm. Concretely, the project will explore through desk and empirical research the increasingly hybrid forms of corporate-established remedies. Through the same methods, which will serve to a full-fledged case-study analysis, it will also provide a first-time scholarly assessment of two rights-holders-driven remedy processes. The project expects to shed light on how to enhance the active contribution of rights holders in the remedy field. This, in turn, will contribute to further the objectives of the current business and human rights agenda, as well as of the legal debate on regulation by private actors.