Mineral Exploitation, Violence and International Law

This book explores the challenges that international law faces in curtailing human rights violations arising from mineral exploitation. Beginning with the specific dynamics between mineral exploitation and human rights abuses, the analysis progressively uncovers the layers of regulatory challenges, focusing on the complexities of how economic regimes intersect with, and often undermine, human rights protections. This perspective shows how the fragmentation of international law is not only affecting the capability to protect global interests but also threatening the systemic operation of international law. In this regard, this work presents three expressions of how the fragmentation of international law impacts the response to violence in mineral exploitation. First, fragmentation influences legal operators' classification and objective setting for situations; second, it shapes the selection of response tools, limited by these objectives; and third, it creates conflicts in applying international obligations pertaining to distant special regimes, where the interpretations rendered by decisionmakers are inherently biased towards the interests of the special regime to which they pertain.

Mariona Cardona-Vallès is a lecturer at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), and the director of the Master Program in International Affairs and Diplomacy (United Nations Institute for Training and Research- UOC). Previously, she served as the director of the Master Program in International Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Action (Red Cross- UOC). Before joining the UOC, she was an adjunct lecturer at Universitat Pompeu Fabra from 2016 until 2020.