Complicity of Companies in Chile’s Current Human Rights Crisis

Abstract

The chapter examines the role of the private sector in the human rights violations that occurred during the 2019 Chilean social protests. It discusses corporate involvement, the role of courts in accountability efforts, the most effective legal framework, and the legal obstacles. The chapter contributes to understanding the legal opportunities and challenges that civil society mobilisation and legal innovators face to overcome the force of veto players in current corporate accountability affairs. The chapter first lays out the human rights standards applicable to private actors in Chile in particular. It uses international human rights standards, comparative law, and Chilean legislation to establish private actors’ specific human rights obligations. The second part uses studies on transitional justice and corporate complicity in order to map the patterns of business involvement in current human rights violations. This empirical section draws on qualitative research to investigate how economic actors from different sectors have participated in the human rights crisis. The third part applies the legal standards examined in the first section of the chapter to the patterns of behaviour observed in the second section. It concludes by discussing innovative legal strategies to make economic actors accountable for their involvement in the human rights crisis.