16 - Human Rights, Investment and the Rights-ification of Development

Summary

This chapter develops the concept of the rights-ification of development, which represents a multi-layered set of ideas, discourses, institutional formations and practices of the post–Washington Consensus through which a broad range of actors have sought to ground new transnational regimes of governance and accountability that would “civilize” economic globalization and allow for sustainable development in human rights norms. Focusing on the emerging practice of Human Rights Impact Assessments (HRIAs) around large-scale foreign investments in natural resources, the chapter offers an account of the post-colonial and neoliberal dynamics, background rules and export-led oriented growth models that structure the political economy of global value chains in the extractive industries, and the practice of rights-claiming “for” or “against” development around foreign investments. It argues that, reflecting the current momentum of John Ruggie’s “respect, protect and remedy” framework over alternative efforts to build corporate accountability, HRIAs appear as primarily process-oriented and risk assessment frameworks, which may have limited effect in generating and monitoring of rights-fulfillment.