Injustice Incorporated: The Rise of National and International Impunity for Multinational Corporations in the Extractive Industry

Abstract

Punitive mechanisms for state-sanctioned breaches of human rights law are tenuous at best. Globalization has introduced new complications to this troubled framework in the form of multinational corporations (MNCs). MNCs are global organizations whose operations span multiple countries. Answering partly to home countries, partly to host countries, and partly to investors, MNCs are, in effect, accountable to one. No international organ has jurisdiction over their conduct. This lack of oversight, coupled with the absence of lasting legal outlets for redress, have yielded dire consequences for communities in host countries that suffer from human rights violations such as resource extortion, forced labor, health risks, and displacement due to environmental degradation. This thesis examines the nature of MNC human rights violations in the extractive industry, analyzes the causal mechanisms of national and international corporate impunity, and critiques existing frameworks of corporate conduct. It identifies contributing factors to impunity that have been overlooked in scholarly discourse and offers a set of modest policy recommendations that address such factors. This thesis focuses particularly on ExxonMobil, the largest and most profitable extractive corporation in the United States, and its relationship with the American government. Its finding is that this relationship is indicative of a larger pattern of corporate complicity among home-country policymakers who perpetuate shortfalls in domestic and international judicial systems and quash attempts to increase MNC transparency and accountability. Chapter 1 presents an overview of the topic and its policy context. Chapters 2 and 3 analyze the shortfalls of international and national justice systems in controlling corporate conduct. Chapter 4 examines the use of the Alien Tort Statute from 1980 to 2013 as a means of exacting reparations for abused communities through out-of-court settlements with MNCs. Chapter 5 uses new analysis of the relationship between ExxonMobil and the American government to determine contributing factors to the perpetuation of legal shortfalls discussed in Chapters 2 - 4, namely the rising link between public and private interests. Chapter 6 uses primary and secondary sources to present three case studies of extractive industry abuse in the following countries: i) Malawi, with no outlet for redress; ii) Chad, with a failed domestic outlet for redress; and iii) Indonesia, with a failed outlet for redress in the United States. Finally, Chapter 7 looks to the future of corporate impunity and determines that preexisting prescriptive frameworks and lofty policy recommendations are misdirected. It concludes that attention should be directed away from voluntary transparency initiatives and toward domestic anti-corruption regulations in order to reduce the influence that corporate interests have on home-country regulation standards.