Business and Human Rights Journal

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Reflections on The Neglect of Indigenous Women’s Voices in Development Projects and The Need for Their Legal Protection: The Case of Indigenous Women in Indonesia

PART I Introduction Indigenous women have a crucial role to play in the development of Indonesia. In addition to safeguarding the archipelago’s cultural values and traditional knowledge, they play a significant role in economic resilience, social cohesion, and natural environmental preservation.…

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A Regulatory Tsunami is Coming to Silicon Valley: Tech Companies Must Adopt Responsible Innovation or Risk Losing Their Competitive Edge

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that it was laying off its AI ethics department, joining earlier cuts of ethicists at Meta, Google, Amazon and Twitter, and thereby setting a precedent for smaller tech companies with minimal financial resources that cutting corners in ethical and humane technological advancements is acceptable. …

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Beyond Human Rights: Recognising the Natural World

The United Nations’ Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (Protect, Respect, and Remedy Framework) were a breakthrough initiative. The Principles have brought considerable business attention to the issue of human rights and provided ways for businesses to begin to begin to be held accountable for egregious violations.…

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A new space for Brazil? Prospects under a Lula Presidency

The blog analyses Brazil´s role in the business and human rights agenda after 2014, when two processes came together: the UN Intergovernmental Working Group on a Business and Human Rights Treaty and the Working Group on Business and Human Rights known by its efforts to have the National Action Plans based on the UN Guiding Principles approved.…

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The real meaning of participation: Conflict in the Las Bambas mega-mining copper project in Peru

Peru is highly dependent on the mining sector (mining accounts for 10% of its GDP and 60% of exports). The Peruvian legal framework promotes mining investments and, at the same time, incorporates business and human rights standards, such as citizen participation in environmental impact assessments (EIA) and prior consultation of indigenous communities before the commencement of operations.…

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‘From Formalism to Feminism’ Special Issue of the Business and Human Rights Journal

Feminist perspectives on inequalities have been long been eclipsed from discussions on business and human rights (BHR). When efforts have been made to put a ‘gender lens’ on business and human rights, these have often been underpinned by neoliberal thinking and the related ‘business case’ for gender equality that merely seeks to insert women into existing markets and labour relations.…

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Theory and Practice: Remembering John Gerard Ruggie

There have been many heartfelt and thoughtful tributes to John Gerard Ruggie since his passing in September 2021. Some academics expressed their sentiments by exploring the ways in which his scholarship profoundly influenced the field of international relations, and their own path in that field.…

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John Ruggie Tribute

Modest, humble, self-effacing, gentle, calm, good humored, and generous—and at the same time one of the most powerful intellects and impactful scholar-practitioners of his time: that was my experience of John Ruggie.…

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Business and Human Rights, Conflict and the Converging Legacies of Colonialism in the Palestinian Present

We cannot solve problems with the same mindset that created them. -Albert Einstein As I sit to write this post on business and human rights in relation to conflict, the Palestinian people face yet another cycle of violence in their struggle for the right to self-determination, bringing forward the academic challenge that comes with trying to detach one’s self from a personal connection to a topic.…

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The Working Group and the New Right to Coltan in International Human Rights Law

In July 2020, the Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises (Working Group) issued its report, Business, human rights and conflict-affected regions: towards heightened action (A/75/212), which purports to clarify “the practical steps and outlines practical measures that States and business enterprises should take to prevent and address business-related human rights abuse in conflict and post-conflict contexts, focusing on heightened human rights due diligence and access to remedy” (p.…

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Making Rights Material

In evangelising businesses to follow the UN Guiding Principles, the business and human rights movement has weighed the advantages of wielding the ‘business case’ versus the moral case.…

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Mapping Business and Human Rights in Central and Eastern Europe

Central and Eastern Europe has often been forgotten from business and human rights discourse. Unjustifiably so. Whereas some European countries have been the front-runners in developments in business and human rights standards, several challenges, including systematic business-related human rights abuses, have been prevalent in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).…

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What are the avenues for corporate liability for COVID-19-related human rights abuses?

This post was originally published on the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre’s website and can be accessed here.  The devastating human rights implications of the global COVID-19 pandemic have been thoroughly documented: Civil society has exposed the failure of many governments to protect their citizens and of many businesses to respect human rights in accordance with the UN Guiding Principles on Business & Human Rights.…

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The Swiss ‘Responsible Business Initiative’ – an update

The parliamentary tug-of-war over the ‘Responsible Business Initiative’ (RBI) has come to a preliminary end. It is now certain that the Swiss public will vote on the popular initiative, which aspires to introduce the responsibility of businesses for human rights and the environment abroad into the Swiss Federal Constitution.…

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Tracking COVID-19: Privacy, Health, and Private Power

Experience in several states across Europe shows that the individual sense of whether COVID-19 represents an emergency situation that requires drastic, temporary, behavioral changes and social distancing (#stayathome) appears to differ starkly and, to a certain extent, is dependent on cultural patterns of socializing.…

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