The Right to Development Obligation of Multinational Corporations in Local Community Development: A Focus on the Lesotho Highlands Water Project

Abstract

This article examines the right to development obligation of multinational corporations involved in local community development, with a particular focus on the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP). Most of the LHWP’s construction work is undertaken by foreign
multinational companies from China, France and South Africa. South African companies are contracted by the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority (LHDA) under the 1986 bilateral treaty between Lesotho and South Africa. Some multinational companies have allegedly, with impunity, infringed a broad range of human rights, including the right to development, in the highland communities hosting the LHWP. With minimal leverage by state governments to regulate multinational corporations, this article contends that when multinational corporations violate human rights in their operations, they must be held directly accountable. This analysis also highlights the contemporary understanding of development as a human right. The growing recognition of the intersection between business and human rights requires functional measures and mechanisms for redress. One such mechanism is the duty to cooperate, as the UN Expert Mechanism on the Right to Development has already highlighted. This article argues that the obligation of multinational corporations entails, at a minimum, adherence to the negative obligation to refrain from contravening the right to development in the local communities where they operate, and accountability for violations when they occur.