Achieving Access to Justice in a Business and Human Rights Context

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) can contribute to economic prosperity and social development in the countries where they operate. At the same time, their activities may directly or indirectly cause harm to humans and to the environment. However, MNEs are rarely held accountable for their involvement in human rights abuses and environmental damage. In recent years, activists have challenged corporate impunity by introducing innovative claims seeking to hold parent companies directly liable for the harm caused by their group’s activities. They have also strategically used this type of litigation to trigger corporate accountability reforms at international, regional, and national levels. Using national litigation experiences as a starting point and focusing on European civil-law countries, the book evaluates the extent to which litigation against MNEs has been effective in achieving access to justice and corporate accountability. It also considers whether ongoing regulatory developments, such as the adoption of mandatory human rights due diligence norms and the negotiations for a business and human rights treaty, can contribute to the realisation of access to justice and corporate accountability in the future.

The Concern of Energy Companies in Obtaining and Maintaining their Sustainable Value

The last years are distinguished by increasing the awareness of companies towards sustainable business, going beyond their traditional role of providing goods and services at competitive prices to meet customer requirements. Thus, companies will have to consider the effects of their best practices on the environment and society, in order to contribute to the progress of society and the protection of the environment, the essence of sustainable development being the coexistence of economic and social relations and environmental protection by implementing economic, social and environmental objectives. We can see that every company that seeks to become sustainable must consider approaches based on sustainable business practices geared to meeting customer needs. For companies listed on the stock market, the index that stands next to each company is the one that shows the level of sustainability, through corporate sustainability, long-term value is created for shareholders, taking into account all social factors, those related to the environment, as well as economic ones. All these considerations have led to the establishment of the general objective of the paper, through which the authors aim to explain and present the importance of sustainability/sustainable development in energy companies in conjunction with the UN guidelines on business and human rights, which will address with priority to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030.

Gender Component of Internal Displacement in Ukraine: A Case of Business (In)Capability to Localize Human Rights Impact Assessment

Human rights due diligence (HRDD) has become the buzzword of much of the advocacy and work today around business and human rights.1 It is almost commonplace that companies have the responsibility to identify, prevent, mitigate and account for how they address these adverse human rights impacts as part of their ongoing HRDD processes, in line with the UNGPs.2 The assessment of human rights impacts (HRIA) is a critical step in this process.3

Виклики та можливості розвитку прав людини і бізнес-сфери в Бразилії та Латинській Америці: теорія спільного конституційного проєкту для Латинської Америки (А Ius Constitutionale Commune)

In her article, Brazilian professor Daniela Ann Pamplona describes the role of the JointConstitutional Project for Latin America (ICCAL) in strengthening the investment potential of LatinAmerican countries, strengthening the capacity of Latin American countries and businesses to respectand protect human rights. ICCAL is the latest theory developed by Armin von Bogdandi, MarielaMorales Antoniazzi and Flavia Piovesan at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law andInternational Law, which seeks to promote the transformation of social and political realities in LatinAmerica to create the necessary democratic conditions. and human rights. The current situation in theregion is characterized by a number of multifaceted challenges: high poverty rates, deep social gapsthat limit access to opportunities, especially for the most vulnerable; Ethnic groups and indigenouspeoples are not protected and respected in the implementation of macro-projects, such as mining,the lack of norms and practices on the obligation of companies to consult widely with indigenous andtribal peoples and to ensure their participation in any decision to intervene affects their territories.ICCAL’s approach to business and human rights is based on various Inter-American Court rulingsthat recognize the role of companies in adversely affecting human rights, but at the same time clearlyarticulate the human rights obligations of governments and businesses in terms of the HumanRights Guidelines. As the author explains, the potential role of ICCAL is that it can be a practicalguide for interpreting different national norms and helping to strengthen weaker states. It can alsostrengthen dialogue between countries in the region and with the Inter-American Human RightsSystem. Cohesion around the meaning and content of human rights will allow states and companiesto more effectively coordinate and coordinate actions to promote human rights.

Contours of National Action Plans on Business and Human Rights in Central and Eastern Europe

Central and Eastern Europe has been often overseen in the debates on business and humanrights. Countries in the regions share a common history, experience and culture. Human rights andfundamental freedoms were in the past systematically and generally violated. Since democratisation,countries have suffered from a wide range of related human rights abuses. Corporations in theregions have often directly and indirectly interfered with the human rights of employees and thewider communities. Business and human rights has in the past lagged behind global developmentsalso in the light of the lack of capacity and general deficient human rights situation. This articledescribes and discusses contours of the National Action Plans on Business and Human Rights of theCzech Republic, Poland, Lithuania, Georgia, Ukraine and Slovenia by examining their strengths anddeficiencies. It argues that the field of business and human rights in Central and Eastern Europe hasmade a step forward in the last decade since the adoption of the United Nations Guiding Principleson Business and Human Rights. Nonetheless, human rights should be further translated into practiceto effectively protect human dignity of rights-holders.

Corrupt from the Head Down: Human Rights Impacts of Political Favouritism in Public Procurement

Public procurement represents a significant part of the global economy and influencesthe nature and quality of public goods and services. Consequently, it has substantial direct and indirectlinks with the human rights of a wide array of rightsholders. However, public procurement systemsrarely reflect these links and remain resistant to calls on human rights integration from internationalorganizations and academic scholarship. While this divergence is often discussed, the root governance issues that create the gap between public procurement and human rights and contribute to the lackof progress remain relatively unexplored. This paper investigates a prevalent governance issue inpublic procurement – political favouritist corruption schemes – and their role in the paradoxical lackof progress in aligning public procurement systems with human rights requirements. Through theanalysis of primary and secondary sources, the paper demonstrates the links between such corruptpractices and prevalent human rights issues in public procurement. It argues that by underminingpublic procurement systems, political favouritism jeopardizes primary economic and secondarysocial objectives of procurement and brings about adverse human rights impacts. These impactsharm civil and political, as well as economic, social and cultural human rights in national contextsand obstruct the development at large. Moreover, this corrupt arrangement represents a roadblockfor promoting human rights integration in public procurement and, hence, hampers the progressfor the novel approach of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in general, andits provisions concerning the state-business nexus in particular. The paper concludes by outliningthe need for further interdisciplinary and empirical research which will explore this issue throughthe lens of business and human rights, and offer a systemic analysis of root causes, the state of playand potential solutions.

Business and Human Rights: Key Issues for Legal Theory

Just like the fight against discrimination or other injustice in its time, the sphere ofbusiness and human rights goes through the same stages: the experience of injustice is accumulated –a demand for release from the problem is formed, a demand for a more perfect reality – a requestfor new regulation arises.The article discusses the key issues for the theory of law, conditioned by the formation of thisnew reality. The starting point for consideration is the question of business as a direct addressee ofhuman rights requirements, that is, the operation of human rights without mediation by the state,since one of the defining reasons for the emergence of public expectations, embodied in the conceptof business and human rights, was the inability or in some cases of deliberate unwillingness of thestate to ensure corporate respect for human rights. This, in turn, raises the question of the powerinfluence of business on human rights and the need to revise the concept according to which privateactors in their relations are equal. The imperious nature of the influence of business also means thatthere is a revision of the social contract, the parties to which were previously considered society andthe state, and therefore the need to legitimize such power of business, substantive and procedural. Even in a situation where the state exercises effective control over the business operations, therequirement of legitimation is relevant, since there is a space free from state legal regulation. Objectively,the state cannot (and should not) regulate all aspects of the functioning of economic entities; thespace for self-regulation always remains. Business, by understanding its internal processes, is betterable to identify risks to human rights and minimize them. The state can only react to the violationof human rights that has occurred.The demand for business to fulfill its human rights obligations is particularly heightened ina situation where government control over its activities is absent or ineffective. Such situations arepossible in the case of a weak nature of state power or its inconsistent policy in the field of humanrights (in particular, investment projects may not be assessed by the state in terms of their impacton human rights) or in a situation of an undemocratic political regime, when the state itself violateshuman rights. and business is directly or indirectly involved in such violations. It is also possible thatthe state does not have sufficient leverage over business. Transnational corporations are a classicexample of this situation. The lack of effective state control can also be explained by the oligarchicstructure of the economy.Accordingly, the concept of business and human rights, being a response to modern challenges of“unfair social experience”, forces us to reconsider the classical views on the addressees of human rightsdemands, the mechanism of operation of the rule of law, the requirements of which should applyto private actors and, in general, to reconsider the social contract taking into account the significantimpact that business has on the organization of life in modern society.

Corporate Human Rights Obligations under Socio-economic Rights

In the chapter it is examined obligations of business in the field of socio-economic rightsThe author proceeds from the understanding of the importance of socio-economic rights to ensurethe livelihood of people and the creation of human opportunities, as well as their fundamental naturein terms of enjoying civil and political rights. The author is convinced that not only states, but alsocorporations, have certain obligations in the field of socio-economic rights. Because socioeconomicrights are linked to financial resources, corporations can make a significant contribution to securingthem in case of state fragility.The author analyzes international documents, compares national legal systems, as well as othersources (decisions of treaty bodies on human rights), and he concludes that corporate obligationsgain their legitimacy due to the horizontal application of national and international human rights law.It is noted that the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the OECD Guidelines forTransnational Enterprises, the UN Global Compact, the ILO Tripartite Declaration play a significantrole in promoting corporate human rights obligations in the field of socio-economic rights.The author also analyzes the significance of voluntary commitments of both individual corporationsand individual sectors that are generally the part of corporate policy and suggests their questionablelegal nature (lex imperfecta), as they do not provide sanctions for their violation.Analyzing the features of corporate obligations under socio-economic rights, the author takes asa basis the negative and positive dichotomy of human rights, as well as the approach embodied ininternational human rights law on three types of human rights obligations – to respect, protect, ensure.The author concludes that within each of the types of socio-economic rights obligations, corporationshave both preventive (negative and positive) and some corrective (negative and positive) obligations,especially where they control and/or or influence or in proximity of their operations.

Conceptualizing Corporate Accountability in International Law: Models for a Business and Human Rights Treaty

This article conceptualizes corporate accountability under international law andintroduces an analytical framework translating corporate accountability into seven core elements.Using this analytical framework, it then systematically assesses four models that could be used ina future business and human rights treaty: the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business andHuman Rights model, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights model, the progressive model, andthe transformative model. It aims to contribute to the BHR treaty negotiation process by clarifyingdifferent options and possible trade-offs between them, while taking into account political realities.Ultimately, the article argues in favour of the BHR treaty embracing a progressive model of corporateaccountability, which combines ambitious development of international law with realistic prospectsof state support.