The Equality and Human Rights Commission has just issued A Guide to Business and Human Rights – How Human Rights Can Add Value to Your Business. The guide is aimed at British businesses and specifically Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). It provides simple answers to key questions such as “What are human rights?” and “Why… Continue reading

Last night I had the pleasure to participate to one of the Guardian Sustainable Business Quarterly events on “Business & human rights – Implementing principles and solving dilemmas”. The event started with a panel discussion between Hans Daems (Head of public affairs at Hitachi), Faris Natour (Human rights director at BSR), Susanne Stormer (Vice President… Continue reading

A special thank you to Dr. Olga Martin-Ortega for the info about the adoption of the General Comment. On 15 March 2013, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child adopted General Comment No 16 on State obligations regarding the impact of the business sector on children’s rights. The comment has emerged from the… Continue reading

Last night John Ruggie, former UN Secretary-General Special Representative on Business and Human Rights, was in London to launch his new book, Just Business: Multinational Corporations and Human Rights. Professor Ruggie, from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, was the driving force behind the ‘Protect, Respect, Remedy’ Framework and subsequent Guiding Principles on… Continue reading

I would like to welcome the new blog of my colleague Dr Shane Darcy from the Irish Centre of Human Rights called Business and Human Rights in Ireland. In his own words, “the blog is dedicated to tracking and analysing developments relating to business and human rights in Ireland. It aims to address legal and… Continue reading

Yesterday the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Dr Magdalena Sepulveda Carmona, spoke at Middlesex University’s debate on “Does Austerity Harm our Human Rights?”. She was joined on the panel by Professor Joshua Castellino, Dean of the School of Law and member of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and Dr Elvira… Continue reading

It is a pleasure to welcome Dr Evelyne Schmid as a guest poster on ‘Rights as Usual’. Evelyne is a lecturer at Bangor University and is writing a book on the overlap between socio-economic and cultural rights violations and international criminal law. This post is hers. ***************************************************** The Hague District Court recently issued a ruling… Continue reading

My former employer, the Irish Centre for Human Rights (National University of Ireland, Galway), will hold its annual International Criminal Court (ICC) Summer School on 17-21 June 2013 and, just like last year, I will give a couple of lectures. The Summer School gives participants the opportunity to attend a series of intensive lectures over… Continue reading

Last night I had the chance to attend a lecture by Ingrid Gubbay, European Head of Human Rights and Environmental Law at Hausfeld & Co LLP, at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in London. She talked about the Khulumani litigation before US Courts. The Khulumani litigation is among the handful of cases brought under… Continue reading

The European International Studies Association will hold a Young Researchers Workshop on 17 September 2013 in Warsaw. The title of the workshop is “The State Duty to Protect from Business-Related Human Rights Violations: Tracking the Emergence, Diffusion and Impact of an International Norm”. More information can be found here. You can  apply  by  sending  a … Continue reading