Tackling Human Rights, Environmental Protection and Business – A Multilevel Approach

Our teams from Völkerrechtsblog and Jean Monnet Saar invite interested parties to submit blogposts in English or German to our online-symposium. “Tackling Human Rights, Environmental Protection and Business – A Multilevel Approach”.

This symposium aims to explore the implications of corporate activities with human rights and environmental impacts in a multilevel legal order. The call aims to address the complexities that such national, regional and international interactions bring forward. Suggestions include but are not limited to recent developments in the EU legal and international legal order concerning the regulation of corporate activities. At the EU, new initiatives go from the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive to the Environmental Crime Directive. New elements on business obligations, human rights and environmental protection can also be found in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. Further, we aim to explore comparative approaches between different regional legal orders, with a look at extra-EU scenarios, such as the Inter American Human Rights system. Shifting to global perspectives, we plan to examine comments on emerging standards to regulate transnational activities of business corporations under international law. Evolving discussions concern direct obligations and the extraterritorial reach of due diligence obligations for corporations, or the potential impact of the 2021 legal definition of ecocide on the corporate world. We encourage contributions beyond the above suggestions, but we also recommend posts to focus on the human rights and environmental aspects of corporate conduct at national, regional and international levels.