LSE - Laboratory for Advanced Research on the Global Economy - Investment & Human Rights Project

On 27 November Andrea Shemberg, Visiting Fellow at the Laboratory for Advanced Research on the Global Economy (Lab), delivered a presentation about implementing the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP) into investment policy at the 2019 UN Forum on Business and Human Rights in Geneva. The panel discussion offered Shemberg an opportunity to present the research she and Andrea Saldarriaga (also a Visiting Fellow at the Lab) had conducted on the scope and substance of what the UNGPs envision. She argued that while international investment reform has narrowly focused on reforming international investment agreements (IIAs) and investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS), the UNGPs envision that reform is needed across all government functions that promote, facilitate, fund, insure and protect investment.

She also presented the six key issues identified through the research regarding what the UNGPs ask States to integrate into reform efforts. These six key issues aim to reshape traditional investment legal and policy discussions. They include:

1. Revisiting how we understand ‘investor protection’ to integrate the idea that investments are safer when they respect human rights.

2. Augmenting the current singular focus on the protection for foreign investors with a focus on addressing access to remedy in “cross-border” cases, where rules such as separate legal personality and practical difficulties such as gathering evidence across jurisdictions create special vulnerabilities for adversely impacted individuals and communities.

3. Recognising that States do not only have a right to regulate, but indeed a duty to regulate to meet their international human rights law obligations.

4. Integrating, along with the expectations of investors, those expectations of home and host States as well as individuals, communities and publics that investors respect human rights in line with the UNGPs.

5. Improving transparency and disclosure across […]

Over the course of 2019, LSE Laboratory for Advanced Research on the Global Economy Visiting Fellows Andrea Saldarriaga and Andrea Shemberg, in collaboration with Anna Triponel and Krystel Bassil, created a unique case study based on the experience of the French construction company VINCI in Qatar.

The case study was created with the agreement and involvement of the company, yet the voices of external stakeholders were fundamental to the design and editing of the case study, and full editorial control was left to the authors. The case study is based on close to 40 interviews of people within the company and other stakeholders such as investors, civil society and trade union representatives. The story relates to VINCI’s work in Qatar, the human rights challenges in that geography and the company response to a law suit filed in France by Sherpa, an NGO, for alleged human rights impacts in Qatar.

The case study was designed to help students in law, business, human rights and other related fields learn about business and human rights challenges, human rights due diligence in practice and evaluate the company’s reaction to the law suit brought by civil society. The case study contains deep detail about how VINCI worked in Qatar as well as the process that led to the initial response to the law suit brought by Sherpa.

A Teachers’ Note accompanies the case study, as does a set of exhibits. The case study can be used in a number of different ways by educators and practitioners, and the materials provided would allow users to use the case either in a short number of hours or even over a period of several weeks of classes or a semester.

The case study is now in its pilot […]

On 26, 27 and 28 November 2018, almost 3,000 participants from government, business, civil society, UN bodies, trade unions, academia and the media, gathered in Geneva at the seventh edition of the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights to discuss trends, challenges and progress in advancing implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs).

The emphasis of the Forum for 2018 “Business respect for human rights – building on what works” was the second pillar of the UNGPs, that is the corporate responsibility to respect human rights. The Forum focused on the requirement that companies exercise human rights due diligence to prevent adverse impacts on people, hosting discussions of emerging practices in different sectors and across value chains, and exploring what human rights due diligence implies in relation to specific human rights risks and impacts.

Andrea Saldarriaga and Andrea Shemberg, Visiting Fellows at the Laboratory for Advanced Research on the Global Economy, actively contributed to the Forum by organising and speaking in three sessions covering cutting-edge topics on the business and human rights agenda.

Responsible exit: As the sole speaker at the snapshot session “Exiting responsibly: respect for human rights in circumstances of urgent exit”, Andrea Saldarriaga used a short video produced with the Iran Business Responsibility Project (IBR) to highlight the importance for companies to address the impacts that leaving a market and reducing or winding up operations can have on people’s rights. While the business and human rights debate has been focused on key corporate decisions such as market entry, new investments or the launching of new products or services, less attention has been given to questions of sales and market exit – especially in circumstances of urgent exit.

Business lawyers and human rights due diligence: […]

On 20 and 21 September the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) hosted an expert meeting to  help set out the scope and methodology for the third phase of the Accountability and Remedy Project (ARP), which is focused on non-State-based grievance mechanisms (i.e. company-level and other third-party grievance mechanisms). The OHCHR has been working on the ARP initiative since 2014 to address the challenges that victims of human rights abuses face when business enterprises are involved. The ARP has received multiple mandates from the Human Rights Council to deliver rigorous and evidence-based guidance to States to improve implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in the area of access to remedy, in particular, to ensure a more effective system of remedies in cases of business involvement on human rights abuses. The ARP initiative is important not only for the evidence and insights it collects on remedy but also potentially for the development of international law. This work remains a high priority for the new UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, and continues to be watched and appreciated by the Human Rights Council.

Andrea Shemberg, Visiting Fellow at the Laboratory for Advanced Research on the Global Economy, participated on a research team with two researchers from the Alliance Manchester Business School to draft a scoping paper for the ARP III process. The purpose of the paper was to contribute to the OHCHR’s effort to map the current practices and challenges with respect to the use of non-state-based non-judicial grievance mechanisms (NSBGM) as a way of enhancing access to remedy in cases of adverse human rights impacts that are business-related, and to identify areas for further research, especially […]