Mandatory due diligence laws and climate change litigation: Bridging the corporate climate accountability gap?

The debate on corporate climate accountability has become increasingly prominent in recent years. Several countries, particularly in the Global North, have adopted mandatory human rights and/or environmental due diligence legislation. At the same time, judicial and quasi-judicial proceedings are helping to shape the contours of corporate climate accountability. This article considers how litigation against corporations and due diligence legislation interact, and thereby help develop and strengthen corporate climate accountability. While the practice in this area is still limited, there is scope to reflect on early developments and how they may influence both future climate litigation as well as ongoing and future law-making on due diligence. We first review recent developments in climate litigation against corporations, focusing on the extent to which they rely on climate due diligence obligations. We then survey existing and proposed due diligence legislation, examining the extent to which it addresses corporate climate accountability. Finally, we identify scenarios of how due diligence legislation and climate litigation may interact and possibly converge to strengthen corporate climate accountability. We furthermore identify knowledge gaps and areas for further research.     

What Role for Human Rights in Business?

The Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) were endorsed by the United Nations Human Rights Council in June 2011, following the six‐year mandate of the Special Representative to the Secretary General (SRSG) on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises. The SRSG developed a framework comprised of three pillars: (1) States have a duty to protect against human rights abuses committed by third parties, including business enterprises; (2) business enterprises have a responsibility to respect human rights; and (3) victims of business‐related human rights abuses need access to effective remedies. In particular, guiding principle (GP) 11 provides that business enterprises should respect human rights, that is, they should avoid infringing on the human rights of others and address adverse human rights impacts with which they are involved. This article considers the implications of the Guiding Principles' framework for business; the continuing role of conventional accountability mechanisms in providing access to remedy for victims under the third pillar of the framework; and developments in ‘hard law', with a particular focus on the approach by the UK, since the introduction of the UNGPs, before turning, briefly, to the future for business and human rights.     

Deaths While under Probation Supervision: What Role for Human Rights Legislation?

Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states that ‘everyone has the right to life’. This right is contained in all human rights treaties that developed from the UDHR, including the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Yet, as we argue, the UK government is failing to protect this right when it comes to certain groups of people under probation supervision. To date, human rights legislation has failed adequately to protect these vulnerable individuals and to hold the state to account. This article explores the greater potential for using human rights legislation to ensure better accountability in this area.     

The Effect of Corporate Governance on Corporate Performance in the Financial Industry in Nigeria

The business environment in which the financial industry operates is full of uncertainty and limitations. The inability of some firms in this sector to produce capable management that can guide the interests of shareholders in the light of ethics and values has generated frequent cases of business downturn. This has compelled the industry to adopt the strategy of corporate governance which hinges on the intellectual honesty of directors and management to promote transparency, equity, and accountability, and provide leadership that will guide the industry in the right direction. The major objective of this paper is to ascertain whether corporate governance is a strategy for corporate performance. The study made use of both primary and secondary sources of data. The survey research method and the data analysis techniques comprised of simple percentages and chi-square derived from Kendal coefficient. It discovered that corporate governance is a strategy for corporate performance and the financial sector has failed to improve their performance using this strategy. It was recommended that the regulatory agencies should constantly review the acts that ensure good corporate governance and embark on constant monitoring in order to sanction any defaulting bank.     

What can Post‐Democracy tell us about TNCs and Extraterritorial Violations of Human Rights?

This article considers the problem of extraterritorial human rights violations committed by transnational corporations (TNCs), and draws on Crouch's framework in Post‐democracy to illustrate why the issue has proved so difficult for states to regulate. I begin by examining the problem of corporate regulation more generally, and set out Crouch's analysis to show why and how corporations have become so influential. The second section considers the area of business and human rights, and explains why there is ‘a governance gap’ in relation to extraterritorial human rights violations committed by corporations. The third section describes efforts at the international and domestic levels to regulate corporations in relation to this issue. It concludes that while new international principles and innovative hybrid schemes are playing a valuable role in norm creation and standard‐setting, the enforcement of these principles remains limited. Corporations have largely succeeded to date in their lobbying efforts to remain free of any direct obligations under international law.     

联合国国际人权两公约之背景,内容与意义

联合国国际人权两以约是国际社会在人权保护方面最重要的两个公约。两公约诉产生过程,内容和执行体系,都表明国际社会在人权保护领域既普遍的共识,也有尖锐的分歧。两公约本身即是求同存异的产物,它是尽可能地融合了东西方国家对人权的不同理解,充实和发展了《联合国宪章》中关于基本人权的内容和为人权领域的国际合作提供了国际法依据。但是,人权进行国际法领域,并不意味着可以把人权作为攻击或干涉他国内政的工具,借口不人     

What comes first,democracy or human rights?

Minimalists about human rights hold that a state can have political legitimacy if it protects a basic list of rights and democratic rights do not have to be on that list. In this paper, I consider two arguments from Benhabib against the minimalist view. The first is that a political community cannot be said to have self-determination, which minimalists take to be the value at the heart of legitimacy, without democracy. The second is that even the human rights protections minimalists take to legitimize institutions cannot be had without democracy. These rights can only be adequately interpreted and specified for any social context if the interpretations and specifications result from democratic processes. Here, I bring out some important problems with these arguments and so conclude that they do not represent a robust case for rejecting minimalism.     

Singaporean foreign policy and the Asian Values Debate, 1992–2000: reflections on an experiment in soft power

Between 1992 and 2000, the international order witnessed a clash of discourses not seen since the height of the Cold War when both superpowers engaged in propaganda offensives to assert the superiority of their respective governing ideologies. However, unlike the Cold War, the Asian Values Debate did not involve a supporting cast of armed occupations, insurgencies and the preaching of revolution. It involved instead statements of difference couched in intellectual and material terms, and also relied heavily on persuasion by words and symbolic deeds. This article seeks to evaluate Singaporean foreign policy in the Asian Values Debate by using the concept of soft power as described by Joseph Nye. However, soft power, as the ability to obtain foreign policy ends through attraction or convincing rather than through coercion, is itself vulnerable to instances where the ideas propounded diverge from the practices they purport to inspire. Singapore’s role in the Debate will be examined through three events at its zenith between 1992 and 2000: the clash between Asia and the West at the 1993 United Nations World Conference on Human Rights at Vienna, the Michael Fay Caning Affair which directly pitted Singapore against the US in 1994, and the fate of the Asian exceptionalist argument in the face of the 1997–99 Asian Financial Crisis. The conclusion suggests that Singaporean foreign policy’s experiment in soft power has had its successes, but it remains qualified in its applicability to other Asian foreign policies by certain limits inherent in the Singaporean discourse.     

Rethinking Human Rights in York as a Human Rights City

Human rights is in crisis in the UK. It lacks significant political backing and public support. This ‘insider account’ of York becoming a human rights city suggests that there is a need to rethink approaches to human rights. The article looks at the strategies adopted in the city; the annual city‐based indicator report which provides the key reference point for all local activities; and the declaration of York as a ‘human rights city’ in 2017 alongside its subsequent impact. The discussion is linked to two debates within human rights: how to define and build a culture of human rights, and what it means for human rights to be truly relevant at a local level. The new approach advocated can be summarised as participatory, locally informed, and related to everyday concerns.     

农村信用社人力资源管理探讨

本文分析了当前农村信用社人力资源现状,并从农村信用社人力资源管理现状分析当前农村信用社人力资源存在问题的原因。在此基础上,有针对性地提出农村信用社人力资源管理对策。     

全球化时代企业劳动者权益保护面临的挑战和对策

经济全球化、全球市场的开放和融合使全球范围的竞争加剧。为了降低生产成本,提高竞争力,许多国家都把压低本国劳动力成本作为首选的方式。这就使政府对劳动关系规制放松,企业拥有更多的工作场所的支配权,采取了更为灵活的雇佣方式,雇佣更多非全日制员工、短期员工、租赁员工等。而这些非“正式”员工的劳动保障和待遇往往都很低,一些基本的劳动权益很难保障。本文分析了全球化对劳动者权益的影响,指出劳动者权益缺失产生的严重后果,最后提出相应的解决对策,即政府应加强对劳动者权益保护,加强企业社会责任,强化工会职能,三管齐下维护劳动者权益。