Researchers Discuss Private-sector Human Rights Violations

Continued from page 2 public spheres has real effects on the legitimacy of democratic systems, Olsen argued.

“Lots of people in Latin America and around the globe are actually trying to understand how to navigate this tension, feeling very much like economic growth has been fine, but it’s unequally distributed,” she said. “I think it has implications for people’s interest in waiting out the democratic experiment.”

Following Olsen’s presentation, a discussion segment began. López noted how conversations around human rights have an unclear relationship with corporations and emphasized the difficulties inherent in holding corporations to the same standards as states.

“The international human rights regime was based mostly for state actors. That is one of the main challenges that current affairs in human rights is facing. Usually the way we think about human rights, state responsibilities, is that they are applied by treaties or other sorts of conventions,” López said. “In an international level, [corporations] have personhood, sort of, at least in human rights there’s a conversation about that.”

Olsen also remarked on how the paradigms of human rights advocates and corporations are drastically different.

“The human rights world writes about this as though there’s this story of corporate impunity. From a strategic management perspective, the world is a scary, risky place, and there are competitors, and regulators around every turn, and you are lucky if you survive another day,” Olsen said. “So, it’s just this complete disconnect on how business leaders really perceive the world and how human rights advocates think of it.”

Du Bai ’26, who heard about the lecture through his political science class, appreciated Olsen incorporating a business perspective he had not been familiar with.

“Her points on business reactions to environmental, or just state regulations in general, and from the perspective of risk management methods, I think it’s very interesting to think about it, from the perspective of the business,” Bai said.

Ariana Rodriguez ’24, who majors in economics with an interest in developing countries, felt the talk was important in showing both the present issues and also ways forward.

“First, the widespread nature of the issue, I think, became clearer than ever,” Rodriguez said. “I also think that the content that was shown also inspires a little bit of hope for remedy.”

Rodriguez also appreciated the collaboration between the two guest speakers.

“I thought it was so interesting, because we had two very amazing people that had different perspectives on the issue. So, we had [López], on the ground, hands on, directly part of the [Truth] Commission, and then we had Tricia Olsen, who had this big dataset, macro view of the issue,” she said. “I think they complemented each other very well.”

Lucas Romualdo ’24 saw the value in providing an international perspective on campus.

“I think the political sphere at Amherst, in a lot of ways, can be pretty American-centric, and I think it’s always good for students to see not only international politics and events, but also the impacts of that on people, and how these people are reacting to that, and also the role that Americans and the American government, American companies, and American people play in those international events,” Romualdo said.

In ending the lecture, Olsen highlighted the widespread nature of corporate abuses and the role of protections in helping everyday people.

“One thing that I’ve realized when I was doing this research and I’ve been teaching about this: everyone has a business and human rights story in their families,” she said. “It might not be you, it might not be your parents, it might not be your grandparents, maybe it’s your great-grandparents, but think about what economic and/or human rights protections happened in generations past and how that shaped your ability to be in this room today.”