The Role of the African Human Rights System in advancing Corporate Accountability in the Extractive Industries

Abstract

For over a century, corporations engaged in the extractive industries in Africa have operated without ethical rules. They have been notoriously fingered for rampant environmental, labour, health and human rights violations, including land despoliation, forced displacement, environmental pollution, cultural infringements and, sometimes, deaths. While the responsibility for regulating companies and protecting human and peoples’ rights primarily rests with states, they have often been unable or unwilling to do so effectively. Amidst these persisting challenges, the phenomenal rise of transnational corporations in the global economy have rendered more complex the gaps in global governance by presenting new challenges that make territorial regulation by single countries impracticable. While victims groan, contestations about the human rights obligations of corporations have allowed extractive and other companies to fly below the radar of accountability; thereby, enabling extractive businesses to ride roughshod over communities and the environment. After several United Nations-led initiatives to address the adverse impacts of corporations, they have proven insufficient to hold companies accountable for violations in the extractive sector. This thesis, therefore, is a dispassionate attempt to explore the role of the African regional human rights system as an important complementary level of normative and institutional governance for regulating abusive corporate conduct and advancing human rights accountability in the extractive industries. It adopts an African approach to corporate human rights accountability in critically evaluating the contours of the corporate accountability discourse. It problematises the near-total reliance on inadequate domestic action in host states for regulating powerful corporate conglomerates in this age of globalisation and highlights the limits of extraterritorial regulation by home states in addressing transborder abuses. After a careful assessment, it finds that African human rights norms and regional mechanisms can play a key part in regulating abusive corporate practices and protecting the human rights and environmental wellbeing of resource-rich communities affected by the extractive industries in Africa.