Abstract:
In 2019, a palm oil company in Indonesia settled groundwater contamination claims with 11 villages through confidential mediation. They disclosed nothing to regulators. The 12th village came later and negotiated blind. It is the intended result of mediation confidentiality: a rule meant for business disputes applied unchanged to cases where entire communities rely on information the law keeps hidden. This article argues that broad confidentiality rules let corporations manufacture systematic immunity in environmental, labour, and land-displacement disputes. The article suggests a new confidentiality framework that separates purely bilateral business disputes from those that impact public interests, requiring transparency for the latter and keeping full confidentiality only for the former.