In association with the International Commission of Jurists

September 2020

14 Sep

This week we are hosting another great online symposium, this time on the 20th anniversary of Ruti Teitel's seminal book, Transitional Justice, (OUP, 2000). The book's abstract: At the century's end, societies all over the world are moving from authoritarian rule to democracy. At any such time of radical change, the question arises: should a society punish its ancien regime or let bygones by...

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11 Sep

[Brian McGarry is Assistant Professor of Public International Law at Leiden University.] On 2 September, Canada and the Netherlands issued a Joint Statement indicating their intention to intervene in the ongoing ICJ proceedings instituted by The Gambia against Myanmar. The Joint Statement is ambiguous in regards to certain details which are key to understanding the intervention’s likelihood of success. While it remains to be seen whether the...

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11 Sep

[Brian McGarry is Assistant Professor of Public International Law at Leiden University.] On 2 September, Canada and the Netherlands issued a Joint Statement indicating their intention to intervene in the ongoing ICJ proceedings instituted by The Gambia against Myanmar. The Joint Statement is ambiguous in regards to certain details which are key to understanding the intervention’s likelihood of success. While it remains to be seen whether...

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11 Sep

[Richard Mackenzie-Gray Scott is a consultant at the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law.] Reading further might disappoint those interested in investor-state dispute settlement. I will not be analysing the minimum standard of treatment with which the ISDS aficionados are familiar. Instead, I offer some thoughts relating to a minimum standard of treatment in the context of labour practices, specifically those of entities within the international law community....

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11 Sep

[Ursula Gernbeck is a public prosecutor at the Munich I Public Prosecutor's Office and previously worked in the Bavarian State Ministry of Justice; she gives her personal opinion here; Katrin Höffler and Kai Ambos are professors of law at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. The authors thank Dr. Lucia Sommerer, LLM (Yale) for preparing this English version.] Rarely have protests in the recent past...

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11 Sep

[Claire Methven O’Brien is Senior Researcher and Strategic Adviser at the Danish Institute for Human Rights, and Baxter Fellow and Lecturer at the Law School, University of Dundee.] Human society faces unprecedented and interlinked global challenges: climate change, catastrophic environmental destruction, the concentration of global wealth and power into the grasping hands of a tiny few, while insecurity and denials of basic social and economic rights dog...

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11 Sep

[Markus Krajewski holds the Chair in Public and International Law at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg.] As noted by Surya Deva in this blog, the 2020 Second Revised Draft for Legally Binding Instrument (LBI) on Business and Human rights is “negotiation-ready”. However, he wonders if states and the European Union are ready for negotiations. This contribution argues that the EU should be...

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10 Sep

[Daniel Uribe is Programme Office of the Sustainable Development, Climate Change and Gender (SDCCG) Programme of the South Centre. The views contained in this brief are attributable to the author/s and do not represent the institutional views of the South Centre or its Member States. Any mistake or omission in this study is the sole responsibility of the author/s.] On the 6th of August 2020,...

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10 Sep

[Olivier De Schutter is the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. He was until 2020 a member of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.] One of the innovative contributions of the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, endorsed by consensus within the Human Rights Council in June 2011, was to include the practice of human rights due diligence as part of businesses'...

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09 Sep

[Elizabeth Mangenje and Timothy Fish Hodgson are Legal Advisors at the International Commission of Jurists.] The newest draft of the “Legally Binding Instrument to Regulate, in International Human Rights Law, the Activities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises” was published in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, a public health emergency which has had extensive impacts on human rights globally. In the context of the right to...

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09 Sep

[Sarah Joseph is Professor of Human Rights Law and Mary Keyes is Director of the Law Futures Centre at Griffith University.] The draft treaty on business and human rights signals an intention to facilitate cross-border human rights litigation against businesses and associated cross-border cooperation. To date, most instances of such litigation have been characterised by protracted procedural battles regarding matters of private international law (especially...

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08 Sep

[Jelena Aparac is lecturer and legal advisor in international law with a focus on Business and Human Rights in Armed Conflicts. Dr. Aparac is also an expert member of the UN Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries.] The Open-ended Intergovernmental Working Group on Transnational Corporations and Other Businesses with Respect to Human Rights (“IGWG”) was mandated by the Human Rights Council (res 26/9) to...

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