In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Business & Human Rights

06 May

Introduction It is widely acknowledged that, without regulation, Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) can contribute to violations of international law and benefit from impunity. Both corporate actors and States increasingly rely on PMSCs to secure their operations in high-risk areas—whether through direct contracts, in-house security arrangements, or outsourcing military and law enforcement functions. Numerous UN reports have documented a rising...

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07 Apr

[Maya Nirula is a dual-qualified international human rights lawyer with multi-jurisdictional experience consulting and litigating on issues of business and human rights] Recapitulation  This is the second of a two-part series, the Role of Business in War. Part I: The Old Offense evaluated the interaction between International Humanitarian Law (IHL), International Human Rights Law (IHRL), and International Criminal law (ICL) in governing gross...

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07 Apr

[Maya Nirula is a dual-qualified international human rights lawyer with multi-jurisdictional experience consulting and litigating on issues of business and human rights] Introduction  This is the first of a two-part series, the Role of Business in War. Part I: The Old Offense will evaluate the interaction between International Humanitarian Law (IHL), International Human Rights Law (IHRL), and International Criminal law (ICL) in governing...

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22 Dec

In my capacity as Special Adviser on War Crimes, I have been assisting the Prosecutor with the development of the OTP's forthcoming policy on Environmental Crimes Under the Rome Statute (ECP) -- a policy he announced in Paris last February. “Damage to the environment poses an existential threat to all life on the planet,” the Prosecutor said. “For that reason,...

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24 Oct

[Claudio Francavilla is associate director for EU advocacy at Human Rights Watch] Some EU governments have long prevented the EU from taking measures to address the Israeli government’s grave abuses against Palestinians in Gaza and in the West Bank. A slew of recent rulings by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) make this inaction no longer tenable, and will test the...

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13 May

[Dearbhla Minogue is a senior lawyer at the Global Legal Action Network and a consultant solicitor with Bindmans LLP. Leanna Burnard is a lawyer at the Global Legal Action Network and a consultant with Bindmans LLP.] The authors represent the World Uyghur Congress before the UK Court of Appeal. The commission of atrocities, including correctional forced labour, by the Chinese government against the Uyghur...

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28 Feb

[Florence Shako is an advocate and academic researching business and human rights and access to justice issues. She is the Senior Partner of Mitullah, Shako and Associates Advocates as well as the Executive Director of the Center for Education Policy and Climate Justice based in Nairobi, Kenya.] The landmark judgment in Ligue Ivoirienne Des Droits De L’homme and Others v. Republic of Côte...

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23 Feb

A few days ago, the European Law Institute published its final report on ecocide. The report not only provides a definition of ecocide, it also contains Model Rules for an EU Directive and a Council Decision that ELI hopes will both "contribute to the inter-institutional negotiations in the EU on the Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and...

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23 Feb

[Saparya Sood is a doctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods (Bonn, Germany). She is a lawyer qualified in India and received her postgraduate degree in law and economics as a recipient of an Erasmus Mundus scholarship. Views expressed are personal.] A New Dawn in BHR Discourse Business and Human Rights (BHR) discourse has become increasingly...

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23 Feb

[Jacob Bogart is a human rights lawyer from the United States specializing in business and human rights in Southeast Asia.] On 19 December, three women human rights defenders in Thailand went to court again to face criminal defamation charges brought by Thammakaset Co. Ltd., a Thai-owned poultry company that has filed 39 retaliatory civil and criminal lawsuits against 23 individuals since...

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31 Jan

1 February marks the second anniversary of the coup d’état in Myanmar. In the past year, the situation for the population has only become more fraught and difficult. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights estimates that 2,890 individuals have been killed, likely an underestimation, 16,000 have been detained on spurious charges, scores have been tortured, many have been sentenced to death,...

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20 Nov

[Leslie Johns (Twitter: @PoliticsIntlLaw) is a Professor of Political Science and Law at UCLA and author of Politics and International Law: Making, Breaking, and Upholding Global Rules (Cambridge University Press). Margaret E. Peters (Twitter: @MigrationNerd) is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Global Studies at UCLA. Her research on bilateral labor agreements was published in International Studies Quarterly and Theoretical Inquires...

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