Crushed by an Anvil: A Case Study on Responsibility for Human Rights in the Extractive Sector

In October 2004, Congolese troops conducted violent reprisals for a minor uprising in the small town of Kilwa, engaging in summary executions, rape, torture, pillaging, and other human rights atrocities. Allegations that a multinational corporation, Anvil Mining, provided logistical assistance for the military\u27s actions led to calls for the company and its employees to face legal responsibility. This article examines the deployment of the multitude of legal and quasi-legal accountability mechanisms available in the Anvil case, including civil and criminal avenues in the home and host states, the application of international criminal law and the use of international soft law mechanisms. In examining the way those avenues were used in the Anvil case, this article attempts to illustrate the practical relationship between the multiple avenues theoretically available for imposing human rights accountability on multinational corporations, including a consideration of non-legal factors affecting decisions on whether and how to assert jurisdiction within a given avenue. It concludes that the incoherence of a fragmented, ad hoc system, and the central importance of political will in invoking a given avenue, present serious problems for the effective enforcement of human rights responsibility for multinational corporations