Mineral Exploitation, Violence and International Law

Mariona Cardona Vallès

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9783031594380
• eBook ISBN: 9783031594397
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Civil Rights in Law
• Index: Law

This book explores the challenges that international law faces in curtailing human rights violations arising from mineral exploitation. Beginning with the specific dynamics between mineral exploitation and human rights abuses, the analysis progressively uncovers the layers of regulatory challenges, focusing on the complexities of how economic regimes intersect with, and often undermine, human rights protections. This perspective shows how the fragmentation of international law is not only affecting the capability to protect global interests but also threatening the systemic operation of international law. In this regard, this work presents three expressions of how the fragmentation of international law impacts the response to violence in mineral exploitation. First, fragmentation influences legal operators' classification and objective setting for situations; second, it shapes the selection of response tools, limited by these objectives; and third, it creates conflicts in applying international obligations pertaining to distant special regimes, where the interpretations rendered by decisionmakers are inherently biased towards the interests of the special regime to which they pertain.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: The Relevance and Limitations of International Law in the Prevention of Mineral Harms
• 2. The Impacts of Mineral Exploitation on Individuals and Communities
• 3. The Limitations of Human Rights Law Enforcement
• 4. Due Diligence and Mineral Supply Chain Mechanisms
• 5. A Space for Human Rights Goals in WTO and Investment Law
• 6. The Room for Human Rights in International Economic Dispute Settlement
• 7. Conclusions
• Back Matter