ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a novel approach to fight and protest against land alienation, forced displacements, and human rights violations evolving from the implementation of large infrastructures. This new form for opposing injustice in displacement and resettlement is predicated on law and legal action. It is also new in that it calls to legal accountability not just the owners of dams, such as states and non-state actors (private sector companies investing in dam construction), but also the major construction companies that contract to build the dams yet neglect their responsibilities in the relocation process of the people displaced to make space for the dam and its reservoir. Studies on displacement and resettlement have largely overlooked the key role of such non-state actors and their accountability in implementing infrastructural projects.
In the context of the prevailing international paradigm of development-caused displacement and resettlement, which still entails forced evictions and excludes affected groups from decision-making processes, we examine the question of foreign liability and corporate accountability through a case study concerning transnational legal proceedings. The legal case resulted from the Merowe Dam project in Sudan, specifically from the expropriation and forced eviction of tens of thousands of people in 2008–2009.
The legal action was introduced in the Prosecutor’s Office in Frankfurt am Main against the Germany-based company Lahmeyer International. The company was engaged from the outset by the Sudanese Government to lead the development and execution of this project: overseeing its construction and the commissioning of the dam. In May 2010, with the support of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, representatives of the displaced Manasir community filed a criminal complaint in Germany against Lahmeyer International. The Frankfurt Prosecutors’ 226Office accepted jurisdiction. This chapter details the context, content, and significance of this legal case, and suggests the implications for parallel efforts.
