UN Human Rights Council

Call for Papers - Sanctions and Africa: An International Law and Politics Conference

This multidisciplinary conference explores these and various other disparate practices with a view to developing a systematic understanding of the ways in which African actors seek to shape, challenge, and advance the knowledge, rules, and practice on sanctions. This involves uncovering and situating African perspectives, concerns and practices within, and vis-à-vis, the broader debate on sanctions in global governance.

Accountability within GVCs as part of post COVID-19 transformative agenda

Global value chains (GVCs), as a dominant form of capitalism today, have been a vehicle for entrenching the concentration of economic resources and power in the hands of multinational corporations. While COVID-19 compounded health and economic crisis, reports emerged that suppliers in the garment industry value chains have been facing mounting challenges as a result of unreasonable demands from big clients, mainly corporations in the United States and the United Kingdom.

A devida diligência nos instrumentos da OCDE e alguns desafios para sua implementação na América Latina

This contribution delivers an overview of OECD documents that tackle Responsible Business Conduct in general and Due Diligence in particular, sharing some of the author’s views on challenges for implementation of due diligence in Latin America.

Using International Investment Agreements to Address Access to Justice for Victims of Human Rights Violations Associated with Transnational Resource Extraction

Access to justice for victims of business-related human rights violations, including harm caused by transnational resource extraction projects, remains a pressing global concern. A 2018 study by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) notes that such victims “continue to struggle to achieve effective remedies for the harm they have suffered”. This is despite the development and widespread endorsement by states and businesses of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

Climate Change, Land, and the UNIDROIT Legal Guide on Agricultural Investments

Treating climate change as a small subset of environmental issues which are then treated as if they can be balanced against economic or social concerns is highly problematic in a time of climate crisis. It is to be hoped that the final text of the ALIC Zero Draft will endeavour to more seriously grapple with the implications of climate crisis for agricultural land investment contracts, and pay close attention to the findings of the IPCC CCLR.

Human Rights and Agricultural Land Investment Contracts – Part One

By bringing forward this interlegal sensibility, ALIC invites the investor to think of their own best interest in broad term and to take the time to understand already-existing, pluralist socio-legal expectations and practices. It also implicitly reminds the investor to take the time to build a relationship with local communities that is buttressed by an iterative understanding of fairness (a core tenet of commercial law). Without such a relationship and appropriate due diligence, ALIC in effect recommends to the investor and the local community to not pursue the deal – no one benefits from a land transaction that is only made possible by disrupting local people’s lives or dislocating them from their homeland.