ABSTRACT

With the aim of grounding the analysis of private transnational human rights governance, the article examines how a European reinsurance company links its human rights policy to its core business of underwriting risks in the case of Belo Monte, a large hydroelectric dam in the Brazilian Amazon. Based on the current international regulatory framework, the global political economy of reinsurance is becoming a constitutive element of human rights governance. Conceptualising underwriting as a social practice, we observe how human rights norms are translated into the corporate form of risks. This process goes beyond questions of norm compliance and involves practices of valuation and boundary-drawing based on the underwriter’s competences and background knowledge about reinsurance markets, value chains and corporate hierarchies. We conclude with a critique of private governance as an institutional pillar of the human rights system that rests on business rationales rather than lending institutional power to rights-holders.

摘要

为了对私营跨国人权治理的分析奠定基础，本文探讨了一家欧洲再保险公司如何将其人权政策与其承保风险的核心业务联系起来，以巴西亚马逊地区的大型水电站 Belo Monte 为例。基于当前的国际监管框架，再保险的全球政治经济正在成为人权治理的构成要素。将承保概念化为一种社会实践，我们观察人权规范如何转化为公司形式的风险。这一过程超越了规范合规问题，涉及基于承保人的能力和关于再保险市场、价值链和公司层次结构的背景知识的估值和划界实践。