Access to justice through business and human rights: the Chilean experience on transnational mining

ABSTRACT: The multilevel economic relationship between community-State-company gives rise to contexts of conflict and ruptures in the local social fabric. The access of local communities to justice requires new ways of dealing with the transnational phenomenon to resolve disputes beyond traditional judicial procedures within nation-States. Our main hypothesis highlights Business and Human Rights as a possible transnational legal instrument of access to justice. The objective is to understand access to justice in the methodological perspective of Economics and Law and Business and Human Rights, identifying their autonomy in relation to the voluntarism of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and the practical application of this in the context of transnational mining activity in post-1970 Chile. The hypothetical-deductive method is used with bibliographic research. Conclusion: i) despite the existence of sustainable business ethics, it only becomes relevant to the Law when a certain normative framework is conjectured, establishing legal and semi-legal procedures and integrating a complex of specific obligations and rights; ii) the process of progressive conversion of CSR to legal responsibility is envisaged through a new gateway represented by the intersection of Business and Human Rights; iii) The pioneering Chilean experience is a result of internal and external political pressures and serves as an example for Latin America in its successes and mistakes, especially the attempt to consolidate the UN theoretical framework through National Action Plan on Business and Human rights with the active participation of representatives from academia, local communities, NGOs, and companies, which serves as a starting point for further research.