Corporations and Transitional Justice Lessons from International Law and National Practice

Evidence from different sources around the world, records patterns of corporate involvement in periods of conflict or repression through the commission of serious human rights and humanitarian law violations. However, transitional justice mechanisms, aming to ensure accountability of the perpetrators, remedies for the victims and ultimately achieve reconciliation have not been linked to corporate malefactors. As a result, victims are denied access to remedies and the corporate perpetrators are not held to account, with detrimental effects for the predicament of transition. Against this backdrop, this thesis argues that corporate wrongdoers should be included in the topography of transitional justice, insofar as they were implicated in the prior violence. It is contended that transitional justice will be able to deliver its goals, insofar as it includes the corporate perpetrators. By ignoring corporate actors, transitional justice leaves an impunity gap and misses an important financial link in its narrative, which could have addressed the multi-layered complexities of prior injustices. Furthermore, it is sustained that the prescriptions of international law stipulate obligations of the transitional state and provide grounds for the inclusion of corporations in the mechanisms of truth, reparations and justice. Hurdles and challenges in the implementation of corporate accountability in the framework of the transition, direct state actions towards specific choices, in order to effectively include corporations under the auspices of transitional justice.