In his landmark 1967 novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez wrote about the ‘Banana Massacre’, where plantation workers that had been striking against the United Fruit Company to improve their working conditions were killed by the military. Despite being an event depicted in a magic realism novel, this example also shows some of the characteristics of Latin America, where colonialism, the close relationship between business and governments, and the incessant fight to protect people from human rights abuses, often converge not just in literature, but in real life. Indeed, Latin America is marked by contradictions between very progressive domestic human rights frameworks and increasing levels of social inequality and poverty; by being part of global value chains while also having an important percentage of informal economy; and by promoting the development of rules and practices without a sufficiently strong rule of law and fragile democracies. To some extent, as the land of magic realism, the business and human rights field in many cases is a real-life example of the nuances and complexities of the region, where progress and challenges are frequently intertwined.

Public procurement is a process whereby the public sector buys from private suppliers the goods, services and works it needs to accomplish its functions. It aims to obtain the best ‘value for money’, ‘in a timely, economical and efficient manner’.1 This traditional procurement’s goal was re-defined by scholars and policymakers to give space to non-economic objectives through the so-called sustainable public procurement (SPP).2 SPP pursues economic, environmental and social objectives within the purchasing process.3 Therefore, ‘social’ is one of the three dimensions that makes sustainability possible, and human rights are the backbone of social sustainability.

Drawing on the work of Donaldson and Walsh, this article explains why for-profit companies in industries denominated by intrinsic values such as health, education and justice, have heavier responsibilities when it comes to honouring the human rights reflected in their industry identity. Optimized collective value, the overarching aim of any system of business, is defined in terms of the satisfaction of intrinsic values, a definition that gives special meaning to firms operating in industries themselves defined in terms of intrinsic values. Nor are such companies’ responsibilities to human rights, such as the right to healthcare, conveniently reducible to the ‘enlightened’ pursuit of profit. For example, a pharmaceutical company such as Pfizer or Moderna may be required to make its COVID-19 vaccine more accessible to COVID-19 victims in developing countries at the expense of optimizing profits over the long run. Such companies have a special and mandatory correlative duty to honour the right to healthcare that derives from their corporate constitutional purpose.

This article addresses the lack of clarity regarding obligations of state-owned enterprises in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Starting from the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights’ latest report on the topic, it develops the scope of human rights obligations for state-owned enterprises in the Americas, framing them in a systemic approach that calls for using both governance and regulatory tools to achieve respect for human rights. The article furthermore argues that there are good reasons for limiting the application of due diligence to the relationships with a company’s private business partners, excluding the relationship with its (public) owner where direct responsibility applies. Finally, the article spells out several specific issues that need to be addressed when assessing SOE human rights governance and shows that the enhanced human rights accountability of state-owned enterprises need not contradict a level playing field between public and private business.

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.

In its 2019 report to the Human Rights Council, the United Nations (UN) Working Group on business and human rights emphasized that ‘gender-transformative’ remedies can bring ‘change to patriarchal norms and unequal power relations that underpin discrimination, gender-based violence and gender stereotyping’. This article aims to deepen our knowledge of such remediation for women human rights defenders who fight against corporate human rights abuses. Human rights remediation is highly fragmented. This has the advantage that remedies at one level can offer sources of learning for remedies at other levels. This article uses relevant communications that the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders sent to states and corporations jointly with other Special Procedures (including the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences and the UN Working Group on discrimination against women and girls in law and practice) between 2011 and 2020 as a source of learning.

On 24 June 2022, the Contracting Parties of the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) finalized discussions on the modernization of the treaty. After fifteen rounds of negotiations, an agreement in principle was reached to be adopted by the Energy Charter Conference on 22 November 2022 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.1 The ECT, adopted in 1994, establishes a legal framework that aims to promote international cooperation in the energy sector.2 It has a membership of 53 countries primarily from Europe and Central Asia, as well as the European Union (EU) and the European Atomic Energy Community. In recent years, the ECT attracted widespread public attention due to its impact on states’ environmental and climate policies. Particularly, the treaty’s provisions on investment protection, with investor-to-state dispute settlement (ISDS) at the centre, allow foreign investors in the energy sector to challenge adverse state action before international arbitration and claim compensation for measures affecting their business activities. Fossil fuel investors have increasingly used the ECT to challenge environmental and climate measures, such as phasing out coal-fired power generation, banning offshore oil drilling in coastal areas, and prohibiting gas fracking projects. Such cases have fuelled concerns regarding the abilities of governments to roll-out large-scale climate action. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that international investment agreements (IIAs) like the ECT could ‘be used by fossil-fuel companies to block national legislation aimed at phasing out the use of their assets’.3 With some of these damage claims running into billions of euros, the ECT enables fossil fuel investors to offload the costs and risks associated with their affected assets onto society at large in the face of necessary climate action. This would go, in the words of the editorial board of the Financial Times, against the ‘heart of the capitalist social contract’ and the ‘ability of markets to deal adequately with the challenge of climate change’.4

Batteries containing cobalt will play a central role in the global transition to cleaner energy. Most of the world’s cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). However, the negative human rights image of the minerals sector in the DRC, and the emergence of an inaccurate and exploitative “blood cobalt” narrative risks harming small-scale, ‘artisanal’ producers who rely on this industry for their livelihood. The DRC government, civil society and small-scale producers already have a roadmap for ending child labour and improving working conditions. Countries and companies whose economies and business interests rely on these precious natural resources should engage with this roadmap rather than disengaging from the country’s mining sector altogether.

The key purpose of this article is to critically assess the extent to which auditing and certification to quality assurance and risk management standards containing human rights-related requirements are an adequate and effective means of ensuring that private security companies internalize their responsibility to respect human rights. Based on participant observation, interviews and publicly accessible data, it concludes that in the absence of the adoption of specific assurance measures in the certification and oversight processes, the constructivist ‘tipping point’ resulting in the internalization of the corporate responsibility to respect may not be attained when there is inadequate norm compliance or, worse yet, norm regression.

The debate over home state responsibility for human rights has focused on how home states might use accountability mechanisms to promote respect for human rights among their businesses abroad. However, a set of activists and researchers have opened a new front on the question of home state responsibility by focusing on the activities of Canadian diplomats providing advice and consular services to extractive firms abroad. This work documents how home states can be directly implicated in business and human rights controversies and how home state diplomats can put human rights defenders at increased risk. This paper outlines the growing body of research on the hidden influence of Canadian economic diplomacy in human rights controversies, suggesting a troubling disregard for corporate social responsibility and human rights concerns in these contexts, and making the case for robust accountability mechanisms to influence the conduct of both corporate actors and diplomatic officials.

Cloud computing underlies many of the most powerful and controversial technologies of our day – from large-scale data processing to face recognition systems – yet the human rights impacts of cloud computing have received little scrutiny. This article explains what cloud computing is, how it works, and what some of its most significant human rights impacts are through three case studies. It offers some initial thoughts on the human rights responsibilities of cloud computing providers under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and concludes by suggesting directions for future research.

On 5 November 2015, the Fundão Dam collapsed, causing the most devastating tailings dam disaster to date. The dam was operated by Samarco S.A., a joint venture by Vale, Brazil’s biggest mining company, and BHP Billiton, the world’s largest mining company.1 Its tailings travelled down the Doce River for ca 700 kilometres until they reached the ocean, affecting 42 municipalities, two states, and thousands of communities along the way. The disaster caused myriad social, environmental and economic impacts: nineteen individuals were killed, and thousands endured physical or psychological harm; water resources and the soil were polluted; habitats were irreversibly destroyed; and the local economy suffered long-lasting damage. Traditional and indigenous communities were especially harmed, as their historical, social, religious and cultural relationships with their land led to even more profound harms.2

Just three weeks after the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized COVID-19 as a global pandemic, novelist Arundhati Roy wrote: ‘Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.’1

This paper analyses whether the implementation of business and human rights (BHR) frameworks in Colombia properly responds to the challenges posed by informal mining and gender-based violence and discrimination in the context of conflict and peacebuilding. The mining sector has been considered key in Colombia to promote economic growth, but it is also characterized by significant informality. Informal mining in Colombia has been linked to gender-based violence and discrimination. We contend that while informality has been identified as a substantial hurdle to the realization of human rights, BHR frameworks still fall short in addressing this aspect of business. By examining the specific measures Colombia has devised to implement BHR, including two National Action Plans on BHR, we demonstrate the urgency of addressing informal economies in BHR and to continue developing particular insights to properly protect, respect and remedy the human rights wrongs women experience in the context of informal mining.