Epistemic injustice and remedy: Can BHR ever really ‘centre’ rights holders?

Abstract

ABSTRACT The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) encourage the use of non-judicial grievance mechanisms (NJGMs) as complementary avenues to litigation for remedying corporate human rights abuses. However, remedy through NJGMs remains challenging. Despite a growing narrative around ‘putting rights holders at the centre’ of remedy and accountability, critiques of the corporate influence in the field of business and human rights (BHR) remain. This paper argues that the conceptual language of epistemic injustice has much to offer BHR. Focusing on remedy through NJGMs through an epistemic injustice lens, it identifies select entry points for deeper examination. The concept of epistemic injustice can help identify exercises of discursive power and practices of marginalisation in deliberative spaces, which may explain gaps between increased numbers of participants in BHR spaces and the lack of change in their lived experiences. It can help point to where and how barriers to remedy are being reproduced, and it offers additional language for rights holders to articulate specific types of harms experienced in these settings. If BHR truly aims to put rights holders at the centre, the BHR community has an ethical obligation to interrogate and address epistemic injustice both at the individual and structural levels.