Introduction

The previous chapter looked at the shift away from public and toward privatized international infrastructure projects. Privatized projects are carried out through transnational public-private partnerships (PPPs), involving a mix of public and private actors, domestic, foreign, and international. This chapter turns to the relationship between this shift toward PPPs, on the one hand, and human rights, on the other. Did human rights strategists play a role in driving this shift away from public and toward privatized projects? Are human rights handled differently by PPPs than by public projects? What types of strategies do nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and community groups pursue to have human rights respected by PPPs? Do transnational corporations (TNCs) and governments respond to human rights advocates with strategies of their own? Do they at times initiate human rights strategies unprovoked?

By way of example, dam projects traditionally have been publicly financed and carried out. However, they are increasingly undertaken as transnational PPPs. With this shift to privatization, human rights express themselves in new and legally innovative ways in the context of specific projects. We see this in the case of the Kotopanjang Dam in the Indonesian provinces of Rau and Western Sumatra. When this dam flooded the Tanjung Pau village, community members did not seek redress from Indonesian public corporations, as might have been done during the heyday of state-financed and carried-out projects. Instead, the human rights strategies pursued reflected a changed landscape.