Corporate Liability for Human Rights Abuses in Latin American Courts: Some Recent Developments

The third pillar of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) is often considered the ‘forgotten pillar’,1 especially when compared with the first pillar, where some of the ‘governance gaps’ the State must address in order to comply with its duty to protect under international human rights law are developed with some level of detail. The same happens in relation to the second pillar, which proposes a practical approach for the proactive involvement of companies in the identification and management of the risks their activities and business relationships may produce on human rights.2 However, the third pillar is not necessarily ‘forgotten’, as it is based on one of the core rights of the international human rights regime. In this regard, not only are the various elements and procedures for access to justice developed within each country’s domestic law and within the international legal system, but they have also been subject to detailed studies by the international and regional human rights community.3 However, it is the least proactive pillar of the UN framework on business and human rights, and the one that faces the greatest challenges in terms of making a specific, substantive contribution in light of the vast existence of civil, criminal, administrative and constitutional proceedings in domestic jurisdictions.