A visão das empresas de mineração acerca do seu papel em relação aos direitos humanos: uma leitura a partir dos seus relatórios de sustentabilidade e de sua política de direitos humanos
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2022-09-01
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Carvalho Teixeira, Marco Antonio
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For companies to respect human rights, it is expected that they are fully aware of their impacts on human rights, take concrete actions to prevent them, in addition to remedying the damages with which they are involved, either directly through their actions, through of its activities along its supply chain or operations in different territories. Thus, one of the UN's objectives is to react to the “failures” and “inconsistencies” of movements such as Corporate Social Responsibility, offering a response to the lack of clarity and enforceability about the responsibilities of companies in relation to human rights. Thus, there is a paradigm shift regarding corporate responsibility in relation to human rights in two ways: (i) it is not enough not to violate human rights; it is necessary to act to prevent the risks and impacts of the company's operations on human rights, especially in the most vulnerable territories; (ii) the responsibility of companies in relation to human rights extends beyond their direct relationships, with their employees for example, and advances to their supply chain, being proportional to the complexity of their commercial relationships and their ability to influence prevent rights abuses. Since the 1990s, but especially since the 2000s, with the Voluntary Principles on Private Companies, mining and steel companies, especially large companies operating in Brazil, affirm and report on social responsibility actions, on sustainability, now on “ESG”, having also committed to observe the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, through its Human Rights Policies and its sustainability reports. This, however, does not seem to have changed the pattern of risks and rights abuses reported by academia and organized civil society. Has the adoption of the Guiding Principles brought about any change in the way you do business? Has there been any progress towards achieving respect for human rights? Is it possible to verify the paradigm shift that the Principles bring with them in what companies say about their relationship with human rights? Considering these issues, this work sought to systematize and analyze the sustainability reports of mining companies in Brazil, considering their activities and operations between 2009 and 2019, as well as their Human Rights Policies. The results of these analyzes allowed us to conclude that there was no change in how companies perceive their relationship with human rights. What count, in most cases, are commitments in relation to rights, about which no concrete progress is made in the adoption of actions and processes aimed at respecting human rights. As the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights concluded on an official visit to Brazil in 2015, companies seem to do business as usual: they focus on avoiding involvement in rights abuses – which impose risks on businesses - and give greater attention to the rights associated with their intramural activities, especially in relation to labor rights, which, compared to risks to rights associated with the forced displacement of populations or conflicts associated with land, tend to be more regulated and controllable. With the support of interviews carried out with members of the top management of mining companies and with people affected, these results led to the conclusion that part of the failures of companies to respect human rights are failures of the State, of not fulfilling its obligation to protect human rights.