Disinformation, hate speech and political polarization are evident problems of the growing relevance of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in current societies. To address these issues, decision-makers and regulators worldwide discuss the role of digital platforms in content moderation and in curtailing harmful content produced by third parties. However, intermediary liability rules require a balance that avoids the risks arising from the circulation at scale of harmful content and the risks of censorship if excessive burdens force content providers to adopt a risk-averse posture in content moderation. This piece examines the trend of altering intermediary liability models to include ‘duty of care’ provisions, describing three models in Europe, North America and South America. We discuss how these models are being modified to include greater monitoring and takedown burdens on internet content providers. We conclude with a word of caution regarding this balance between censorship and freedom of expression.

Since 2017, the government of the People’s Republic of China has heightened repression of Uyghur and other minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Repressive tactics involve family separations, mass incarceration, forced labour and cultural indoctrination. This has been accompanied, in recent years, with an aggressive industrialization of the area which relies heavily on the forced labour of Uyghur and other minorities. The automotive industry, in particular, has expanded into the region. This piece describes China’s push of heavy industry into XUAR and recent findings by Sheffield Hallam University and NomoGaia of abuses against Uyghurs and their links to the global automotive sector. It then explains the methodology employed by NomoGaia in its co-authored report with scholars from Sheffield Hallam University for linking abuses in the XUAR to global brands, and proposes a way forward for the industry.

In January 2022, the UK National Contact Point (UK NCP) issued a final statement in a specific instance claim brought against Bonsucro, a multi-stakeholder initiative (MSI) that aims to promote sustainable production of sugarcane. The claim alleged that Bonsucro had failed to comply with the OECD Guidelines because it had not carried out appropriate due diligence towards one of its members, accused of human rights abuses. While NCP complaints had been brought against MSIs and certifiers before, the UK NCP’s final statement is the first to recognize the leverage MSIs have over members due to their ability to deny membership and related reputational benefits to companies wishing to show sustainability logos, and to affirm their responsibility to use this leverage to avoid abuses. The statement sheds light on the accountability of actors involved in private voluntary sustainability standard systems, with possible impacts on other actors such as third-party certifiers.

The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights conceive of human rights due diligence (HRDD) as covering potential impacts across value chains, including downstream. The proposed EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive and the revision process of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises have sparked renewed discussion on how and whether companies should conduct HRDD downstream to identify and prevent or mitigate adverse human rights impacts. Whilst some debate has occurred previously on downstream HRDD, this has predominantly centred on specific sectors, products and services where the links to egregious human rights harms may be more readily identifiable. This piece seeks to inform the current debate by broadening the examples of sectors, products and services and current business practice which demonstrate the critical need for, and ability of, companies to consider human rights risks downstream.

Aiming to ensure a responsive and socially relevant approach to court cases, judiciaries have initiated innovative projects, such as problem-solving community courts, over the last three decades. In this socio-legal case study, I analyse the legal transplantation of a community court from the US to the Netherlands. Drawing on eighteen months of ethnographic field work (interviews, observations and file research), the study shows that, during the transplantation process, the goal of serving the neighbourhood receded into the background, while the goal of solving the problems of defendants gained even more prominence than it already had at the inception of the court. The conditions that have played a role in the path that the court has carved out to legitimise its activities differ from its American counterparts. The adjustments signify important internal legal cultural differences and illustrates how the implementation process is formed by opinions about the proper role of judges.

This DiF paper analyses the 2021 Consultations for Central & Eastern Europe and Central Asia, conducted as part of the process underlying the United Nations Working Group ‘Report on human rights-compatible international investment agreements’. These consultations led to three unique conclusions concerning International Investment Agreements (‘IIAs’), which were absent in other consultations: (i) the ‘regulatory chill’ caused by IIAs with respect to human rights regulations is moot in authoritarian and ‘hybrid’ regimes in this region, (ii) IIAs tend to be perceived in this region as tools to protect human rights, which can spill over to other areas of socio-economic life, and as a source of inspiration and a model for building similar protections in such other areas, and with the potential to (iii) have a positive impact on the development of domestic laws (and their relationship with the rule of law and good governance reforms in developing host states).

The theist needs a conception of the distinction between doing and allowing because much of the literature focused on the problem of evil attempts to justify (via theodicy) or defend (via defence) God's allowing evil to occur. I present a counterfactual account of the doing/allowing distinction in the divine context and argue that, even if there are compelling objections to counterfactual accounts of the distinction in the human context, they do not work against such an account in the divine context. The counterfactual analysis to follow will allow the theist to plausibly claim that God does not ever bring about evil, which is crucial to some defences against the problem of evil. I conclude by defending my account against possible objections.

In this article, I offer a response to Joanna Leidenhag's book Mind Creation: Theological Panpsychism and the Doctrine of Creation. Whereas Leidenhag argues that the panpsychist's demands for explanation of the mind lead naturally to demands for an explanation of the whole universe, I counter that (i) the panpsychist's explanatory demands are not necessarily quite as general as Leidenhag presumes, and (ii) demands for an explanation of the whole universe can in any case be satisfying via the postulation of a self-explaining universe. I agree with Leidenhag that panpsychism is potentially a helpful way for Christians to think about the relationship between God and the universe, while disagreeing concerning how well suited process theism is to making sense of such a relationship. Finally, in terms of eco-philosophy, I agree with Leidenhag that panpsychism is conducive to a healthier relationship between humans and the natural world, while expressing reservations that a specifically Christian form of panpsychist eco-philosophy is preferable.

This article examines the racial politics of decolonization in late-colonial Nairobi in the decade before independence through the unique space of the colonial bus using archival letters from a group of European women who called themselves ‘The Housewives’. In letters to Nairobi's mayor and the Kenya Bus Service (KBS), the Housewives argued against a newly proposed transportation policy that would make all seating on the colonial buses the same price, doing away with the first-class section. The letters reveal that African bus riders, particularly Muslim women riders, were centrally important in this crucial time in Kenya's urban history. With Nairobi still under a ‘State of Emergency’ as military operations against the Land and Freedom Army (Mau Mau) were coming to an end, these letters show colonial buses as battlegrounds during the final years of British colonial rule in Kenya with extremely porous social borders and transportation vehicles serving as rich sites of urban life.

This article examines the under-researched, inter-connected issues of substantive remedy and a role for Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) National Contact Points (NCPs) to complement judicial remedy regimes involving civil liability for companies in home-state jurisdictions. Even where access to judicial procedural remedy exists, it need not ensure substantive remedy. Legal and economic resource-based power-disparities between parties can reduce victims’ opportunities to present and argue their case; and courts offer limited substantive remedy options compared with the types listed by the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The article argues that combining access to NCPs and judicial remedy offers important opportunities to address well-recognized challenges for victims’ access to substantive remedy, especially with strong NCPs. NCPs can operate in ways that courts normally cannot, to help give victims voice and a choice of substantive outcome. The European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) proposal serves as a cue for the analysis. However, the issue is relevant for any OECD member or the OECD Guidelines adherent state.