The Roots of Corporate Accountability: From the Holocaust and Beyond

Abstract

The chapter addresses the roots of corporate accountability and transitional justice with the post-Holocaust efforts to hold perpetrators responsible for human rights violations that occurred during World War II. It begins with three waves of trials of economic actors in Nazi Germany. While the legacy of modern international human rights law emerged from those trials, the same cannot be said for addressing economic actors’ role in genocide and crimes against humanity, including torture, disappearance, murder, and slave labour. The response to the Holocaust led to what the UN asserts as states’ obligations in transitional justice contexts, which are now embodied in a wide range of international human rights instruments. However, the binding and enforceable human rights obligations contained within these instruments have not been effectively applied to economic actors. This chapter explores why this is the case, focusing on a changed international political context following the Holocaust, including the trials of businesses for crimes against humanity during World War II in Japan, the Rwandan genocide, and in the Argentine dictatorship. The final section considers explanations for why historical precedent has not translated into binding and enforceable international human rights obligations on economic actors.