COLLABORATING PARTNER SESSION

25 September | 16:30-17:30 ICT

Legal Remedies: An evolving landscape

Organized by:

D Sy Law
Norton Rose Fulbright

Background

In recent years, an increasing number of countries around the world have embarked on developing domestic laws that seek to impose obligations on corporations to identify and assess human rights and environmental risks and potential adverse impacts across their supply chain, and to disclose such issues and risks in their financial reporting processes. States with visions of encouraging more socially and environmentally sustainable foreign investment have also embarked on inscribing such aspirations into international investment treaties and investment facilitation agreements. Yet, attempts to instill a sense of corporate responsibilities, if not obligations, under either domestic or international law, for human rights is only one half of the equation. Without a framework that enables aggrieved parties to seek remedial recourse, without a framework that lacks an enforcement, or at the very least, a compliance monitoring dimension, the vision of responsibility for human rights ultimately fails.

The UNGPs envisage that corporations should implement operational-level grievance mechanisms to enable remediation of adverse impacts caused to human rights situations by that particular corporation’s business operations. The UNGPs further envisage that states themselves have a role to play, including ensuring access to both judicial and non-judicial grievance mechanisms. But how have such aspirations been translated into actual practice?

The panel will discuss the different avenues of providing remedy where corporations have caused or contributed to adverse human rights impacts, including recourse through corporate-level grievance mechanisms, domestic litigation, arbitration/mediation under international investment law, and regulatory enforcement under the EU’s new benchmark CSDD Directive approved earlier this year.

Objectives

To highlight the different remedial frameworks that exist today at the corporate level, under domestic law and under international law, and the advantages and limitations of each process
To highlight best practices with respect to the design and implementation of enterprise-level grievance and remediation mechanisms;
To highlight implications of emerging regulatory frameworks, and particular implications for businesses and other stakeholders operating in or with relationships in the Asia-Pacific region
To examine the capabilities – and challenges – of litigation, arbitration and mediation to handle disputes related to adverse impacts caused to human rights and the environment, and emerging trends and developments in the space
To identify and provide recommendations on best practices with respect to the drafting of commercial contracts and international investment agreements/treaties on issues related to human rights, and associated remedial/dispute resolution avenues.

Key questions

The questions anticipated to be posed to the panel will include questions related to the following avenues of remedies, and will also focus on drawing out implications for the Asia-Pacific region in particular: