Justice Movements, Transnational

Describing Transnational Justice Movements

Transnational justice movements include formal, juridical efforts to obtain redress through national, regional, and international courts against those responsible for industrial and environmental disasters, human rights violations, and other forms of international crime. For example, the Ogoni people in Nigeria launched legal claims against Shell Oil, the British-based petroleum company with headquarters in the Netherlands, for human rights violations. The suit included demands for compensation for the murder of activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was hanged by the Nigerian military regime for protesting Shell's activities. In 2009, Shell paid US$15 million in compensation to defend against these allegations, made in a federal U.S. court. Such judicial strategies frequently involve multiple legal jurisdictions, in part because lawsuits against transnational companies seek compensation in the country where the enterprise is registered as well as the country in which it operates. Sometimes, third countries may be involved, based on principles of universal jurisdiction, the idea that perpetrators of serious human rights, environmental, and other crimes may be prosecuted anywhere in the world. For example, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was placed under house arrest in the United Kingdom based on a Spanish judge's international arrest warrant for human rights crimes, as he had not been prosecuted in Chile.

At times, the term transnational justice movement refers to any campaign operating across borders to eliminate unfair inequalities, whether or not the campaign is based on a legal challenge. For instance, persons with disabilities have mobilized internationally against physician-assisted suicide, widely seen by disability groups as legitimating euthanasia of persons with disabilities, based on discriminatory ideas that devalue their lives. Although this campaign has a formal, juridical dimension, aiming to eliminate legislation legalizing physician-assisted suicide, it is part of a broader advocacy campaign for persons with [Page 997]disabilities. Official United Nations-sponsored events like the International Day of Persons with Disability and the UN Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities are other ways that disabled persons struggle internationally for justice. Defined this way, transnational justice is not simply about affirming legal rights but about achieving political transformation, for example, to improve the lives of persons with disabilities through a wide range of measures aimed at restructuring social relationships, institutions, and infrastructures to accommodate individuals with physical and mental impairments so that these impairments do not disable their participation across different spheres of life. Moreover, implicit in such definitions of transnational justice is a rejection of charity-based models. Persons with disabilities do not appeal to the generosity of donors, to whom they should be grateful, but rather make claims for the recognition and realization of fundamental human rights.

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