Redress and Corporate Human Rights Harms: An Analysis of New Governance and the POSCO Odisha Project

Human rights harms caused by transnational business in the global South are increasingly being addressed using ‘new governance’ tools and their cooperative problem-solving processes. Such an approach is employed by OECD National Contact Points (NCPs), which received a complaint regarding Korean steel giant POSCO in India. This article explains the contested aspects of the POSCO project in its politico-economic context and shows how the NCP process sacrificed elements essential to an effective new governance approach. This case highlights the challenges facing new governance tools in advancing human rights in the global South raising significant questions about their usefulness in this context.