6 - Backlash against Corporate Accountability for Grave Human Rights Violations in Colombia

Summary

Colombia has faced over fifty years of internal armed conflict, resulting in more than 9 million victims and dozens of peace negotiations with different illegal armed groups. With the demobilization of the largest paramilitary group in 2003 (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia), the country saw renewed accountability efforts that highlighted the role of businesspeople in the violence. A norm of business accountability for past atrocities started to emerge with a number of convictions in the courts. When the government launched negotiations with the FARC guerrilla group in 2012, many observers expected continuity in this path of increased accountability of economic actors. But the path was severed. This chapter describes the ebbs and flows of business accountability in Colombia, looking at the role of the human rights movement in securing higher levels of accountability, and the emergence of an organized opposition from the business community to stop the process. The chapter argues that this business countermovement is a result of the success of the human rights movement in the courts, which led to convictions and brought the matter to the public eye. All of this created a more tangible threat to the interests of economic actors, leading to the subsequent backlash.