The 'Current Issues in Human Rights Research' Lecture Series
The Norwegian Centre for Human Rights invites leading academics from across the globe to give presentations on their cutting edge research within the field of human rights. The aim of the lecture series is to explore human rights research from several viewpoints and disciplines.
About the Lecture
This presentation explores different ideological visions of corporate accountability for human rights violations and the way they impact on norm formation and justice processes across the globe. Based on empirical analysis of transnational advocacy networks linking Europe, North America, and Latin America, Grosescu identifies four scripts of dealing with corporate violence:
1) the neoliberal script which emphasises the value of corporate self-governance and accountability, including social corporate responsibility (CSR) and auto-regulation initiatives of various industries;
2) the socio-liberal script which endorses binding regulations for corporate responsibility, emphasises the importance of enhancing social and economic rights alongside civil and political rights, but still understand free markets as the key factor of development and economic growth;
3) a combined script of post-colonial and neo-Marxist approaches which underline colonialism and capitalism as sources of inequalities and highlight non-binding norms as surrogate forms of corporate accountability;
4) the Indigenous script, emerging particularly from Latin America, which claims an alternative vision on human rights, challenges both liberal and neo-Marxist approaches, and struggles for the equal rights of humans and nature.
Grosescu argues that in order to understand how corporate accountability works as a field of knowledge and social struggle, we have to abandon assumptions of homogeneity and highlight different ideological approaches and their practical consequences.
About the Lecturer
Raluca Grosescu is a Lecturer in politics at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest. Her work focuses on corporate accountability, international law, and memory and justice processes in post-dictatorial and post-conflict societies. Her latest publications include the monograph Justice and Memory after Dictatorship. Latin American, Central Eastern Europe and the Fragmentation of International Criminal Law (Oxford University Press, 2024) and the co-edited volume Socialism and International Law: The Cold War and Its Legacies (Oxford University Press, 2024). She is currently leading the ERC-Consolidator project Transnational Advocacy Networks and Corporate Accountability for Major International Crimes.
Practical Information
Moderator: Prof. Nina Reiners (NCHR)
The lecture will be in English. Due to limited space, participants will have to register prior to the lecture.