Summary
The mineral development industry, albeit essential, continues to engender human rights and environmental violations in host communities. This paper discusses four approaches to securing corporate responsibility to prevent and redress such violations. It first examines the effectiveness of voluntary initiatives based on corporate social responsibility (CSR), but these are found to lack effective implementation mechanisms. Then, the international law regime as it applies to corporations is discussed. Despite conceptual differences about their scope and application, a number of binding human rights and environmental norms do already exist under which corporations can be held to account. These and other evolving norms can be incorporated into national laws, while pursuing a new international treaty as a long-term goal. Third, it considers the adoption of a human rights-based approach and argues that incorporating human rights values, principles, standards, mechanisms and processes in the functioning of the industry could create a win-win situation for communities and corporations. Fourth, aggrieved party initiatives adopting a legal liability are examined. This paper makes the case for an inclusive approach, employing both voluntary and obligatory initiatives to secure CSR, accountability and, where necessary, legal liability.