Lillian Aponte Miranda (FIU) has published “The Hybrid State-Corporate Enterprise and Violations of Indigenous Land Rights: Theorizing Corporate Responsibility and Accountability under International Law” in the Lewis & Clark Law Review.
From the abstract:
Despite the significant achievements of the contemporary indigenous rights movement, the protection of indigenous peoples’ land rights continues to pose a challenge at the operational level. This challenge is due, in part, to the corporate interests that impact indigenous land rights yet bear little accountability to the indigenous peoples involved. This Article seeks to set forth the analytical foundation for developing approaches to corporate responsibility and accountability in the context of indigenous land rights. Part II evaluates the primary developments in contemporary conceptualizations of indigenous land rights that raise implications for theorizing corporate responsibility and accountability. Part III analyzes both the limitations and possibilities of grounding a theory of corporate responsibility and accountability within the discourse of human rights. Part IV suggests and evaluates three specific approaches for imposing responsibilities on corporate actors and for guaranteeing compliance with such responsibilities: a voluntarist approach, a state-centered approach, and a hybrid state-corporate approach. This Article proposes that there are possibilities within the framework of human rights for designing a regime of corporate responsibility and accountability that specifically addresses the protection of indigenous peoples’ land rights. It ultimately concludes that a hybrid state-corporate approach potentially offers the more effective means of operationalizing indigenous peoples’ land rights vis-à-vis corporate actors.
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