POSCO's Odisha project: OECD National Contact Point complaints and a decade of resistance

ADI researcher Dr Samantha Balaton-Chrimes has published a new report on resistance and remedy options available to victims of corporate human rights abuses associated with Korean steel giant POSCO in Odisha, India. The report is based on three years' of research conducted as part of the ARC Linkage project 'Evaluating redress mechanisms governing the human rights practices of transnational business: lessons for institutional design and operation'.

In 2005, Korean steel giant POSCO signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Odisha state government in India to build a US$12billion integrated steel project, involving a plant, mine and associated infrastructure. For the ten years since then the project has faced strong opposition from the communities affected by the proposed steel plant, who do not want to relinquish their agricultural lands and face displacement.

This is a case not only of human rights risks and harms, but also, much more broadly, of contests over development agendas, and who gets to set them. This report evaluates the strategies used by communities and their supporters to both resist land acquisition and the construction of the steel plant, and seek remedy for harms that have already taken place, primarily to do with violence, intimidation, dubious criminal charges, and the land acquisition that has occurred to date.

The report focuses on the OECD National Contact Point process, and concludes that this process made no identifiable positive impact on human rights in this case. The report also finds that the international business and human rights discourse has had ambivalent effects in this case. It has led POSCO, which was previously inexperienced in this area, to develop some voluntary human rights commitments, but has not led to any tangible changes in its business behaviour in India. Furthermore, it may have equipped POSCO with tools to deflect criticism without making changes on the ground, thereby having an ultimately damaging effect on human rights fulfilment.

The report situates the international business and human rights processes (primarily the OECD National Contact Point process) within a broad landscape of avenues of redress and resistance, and identifies broad factors that have enabled and constrained resistance and access to remedy. It concludes with lessons learnt for the OECD National Contact Points, aggrieved communities and their supporters, and business.

Contact: Rebecca Buys

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