By Aleydis Nissen
Financial Sponsors: Netherlands Network for Human Rights Research, Institutions for Conflict Resolution theme (Dutch Legal Sector Plan), Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) postdoc grant Nr 12Z8921N and Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (F.R.S.-FNRS) chargée de recherche grant Nr FC38129.
Women experience the impacts of corporate activities – including the flexibilization of labour and the privatisation of public services – differently and disproportionally. Women have historically suffered discrimination, and remedies (inside and outside the courtroom) have often consolidated (p. 75) such exclusions. They have subordinated women by reproducing stereotypes and other obstacles that exist in society as a whole. More...
By Melanie Schneider
The NNHRR held its second Doctoral Research Forum on October 14 at the University of Groningen, which hosted the event in cooperation with the Asser Institute and Open Universiteit. The Forum offered a constructive and safe space for PhD members to share their research with one other while receiving valuable feedback and guidance from senior members of the NNHRR. More...
Towards Corporate Obligations for Freshwater?
The European Commissions Proposal for a Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive and Freshwater Issues
By Candice Foot
Freshwater is essential for all life on this planet. Despite this fundamental life sustaining role, the anthropogenic pressures exerted on freshwater resources have increased exponentially, some of the most substantial of which are caused by companies. Companies exacerbate freshwater scarcity due to their volumes of freshwater extraction. Globally, approximately 84% of freshwater resources are withdrawn by the agricultural and industrial sectors. This mass extraction contributes to freshwater scarcity in the basins where companies operate, making freshwater unavailable to meet basic human and environmental needs. Companies are also a major source of freshwater pollution, caused by their discharging harmful agricultural effluents and industrial wastewater contaminated with chemical and radiological substances into surrounding freshwater sources. This deteriorates freshwater quality, causes serious health problems for people and destroys ecosystems. More...
Closing the gap on the torture trade
by Joëlle A. Trampert
2D Structure of Sodium thiopental, a pharmaceutical chemical employed in lethal injection execution. Source: Pubchem, National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information (https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/23665410)
The prohibition of torture is codified in Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the regional human rights treaties. It has also been accepted as an international human rights norm of ius cogens. The Convention Against Torture (‘CAT’) obliges the 171 States party to the treaty to prevent and punish torture, and refrain from expelling, refouling or extraditing a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he or she would be in danger of being subjected to torture. But as Ambassador Skoog, Head of the European Union Delegation to the United Nations, remarked in his introductory speech for the Alliance for Torture-Free Trade online event last December, ‘there is no rule at the international level to regulate the trade in goods used for torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. (…).’ More...
Shell/Nigeria: the fight over secondary liability of parent companies over corporate human rights violations by their subsidiaries
By Nicky Touw
Secondary liability of parent companies for actions conducted by their foreign subsidiaries is a highly contentious topic in civil litigation. Where some see it as an inevitable necessity to rebalance inequality in case of corporate human rights violations, others argue that it is an inappropriate, even abusive, means of using the law to file for damages away from the appropriate forum. Judges in Global North countries grapple with this issue in different ways and the cases are being litigated all the way up to the highest national courts. This blog offers a short overview and discussion of the possible impact of a number of landmark decisions in the UK and the Netherlands shedding more light on the parent-subsidiary relationship in the search of accountability for human rights violations committed by, or with the assistance of, businesses. More...
Climate change as a business and human rights issue
by Stephanie Triefus
source: Markus Spiske via Unsplash
Climate change is increasingly understood as an issue that entails responsibility from all organs of society, including businesses. Law is one of the tools being picked up by activists and affected communities to hold the largest polluters accountable for their contribution to climate change and its devastating impacts.
On 15 October 2020, the NNHRR Business and Human Rights Working Group held an online panel discussion on the intersection between climate change and business and human rights. As climate change has only recently started to be integrated into the business and human rights debate, this event aimed to bring in the voices of scholars and practitioners who are tackling corporate and state accountability for climate change from different perspectives. The panelists included Annalisa Savaresi (University of Stirling), Damilola Olawuyi (Hamad Bin Khalifa University) and David Birchall (University of Nottingham Business School, Ningbo). This blog recaps the ideas put forward by the panellists in their presentations and insightful discussions with the audience through the Q&A session. A recording of the event and the panelists' slides can be found on the NNHRR website.
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