Doing Business Right Blog

T.M.C. Asser Instituut

Doing Business Right – Monthly Report – March 2019 - By Shamistha Selvaratnam

10. April 2019 Antoine Duval (0)

Editor’s note: Shamistha Selvaratnam is a LLM Candidate of the Advanced Masters of European and International Human Rights Law at Leiden University in the Netherlands and a contributor to the Doing Business Right project at the Asser Institute. Prior to commencing the LLM, she worked as a business and human rights solicitor in Australia where she specialised in promoting business respect for human rights through engagement with policy, law and practice.

Introduction

This report compiles all relevant news, events and materials on Doing Business Right based on the coverage provided on our twitter feed @DoinBizRight and on various websites. You are invited to contribute to this compilation via the comments section below, feel free to add links to important cases, documents and articles we may have overlooked.


The Headlines

US Supreme Court decision: World Bank can be sued for projects that impact on local communities

In late February, the US Supreme Court handed down its judgment in Jam et al. v. International Finance Corporation, ruling that the World Bank does not enjoy absolute immunity from being sued in the United States, including in relation to its commercial activities. In this case, members of a minority fishing community in India sued the International Finance Corporate (IFC) (an arm of the World Bank) in order to hold it accountable for various harms caused by the Tata Mundra power plan, an IFC-financed project. The federal district court found that the IFC enjoys ‘virtually absolute’ immunity from suits. The US Court of Appeals upheld this decision. However, the US Supreme Court overturned this decision finding that international organisations can now be sued in the United States. Read the judgment here. The Asser Institute will be holding an event on 24 April 2019 which will summarise the reasoning in the decision and explore the foreseeable effects on the legal accountability of international organisations, and international financial institutions in particular. Register for the event here.


Australian Government releases draft guidance in relation to modern slavery

The Australian Government has published its draft guidance for reporting entities under the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth), which was passed by Parliament in December 2018. The draft sets out what entities need to do to comply with the reporting requirement under the Act. Usefully, the draft informs entities on how to determine whether it is a reporting entity and how to prepare a modern slavery statement. It offers suggestions on how to meet the seven reporting criteria, including how to scope out an entity’s modern slavery risks and possible actions that can be taken to assess and address risks identified. Read the draft here. More...






New Event! Human Rights and the Immunity of International Financial Institutions - Reflections on Jam v. IFC - 24 April - Asser Institute Doing Business Right Blog | All posts tagged 'Health and Safety'

Doing Business Right Blog

T.M.C. Asser Instituut

FIve Years Later: Why do the Accord, the Alliance and the National Initiative perform differently in terms of remediations? - By Abdurrahman Erol

27. April 2018 Antoine Duval (0)

Editor’s note: Abdurrahman is currently working for Doing Business Right project at the Asser Institute as an intern. He received his LL.M. International and European Law from Tilburg University and currently he is a Research Master student at the same university.

After the collapse of Rana Plaza which claimed the lives of 1,138 mostly garment workers and left thousands more injured, the global outcry for improved worker safety in the ready-made garment (RMG) industry of Bangladesh caused by global public interest, media attention and harrowing stories of workers has led to the emergence of various international and national initiatives to address the issue. Three of these initiatives are the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh (the Accord), the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety (the Alliance) and the National Tripartite Plan of Action on Fire Safety and Structural Integrity in the Garment Sector of Bangladesh (the National Initiative).

Although on the surface, these initiatives appear to be quite similar and have the primary objective of improving worker safety in the RMG sector of Bangladesh through inspections and identification of fire, structural and electrical remediations for garment factories, they show considerable differences when looked more carefully. These differences influence the outcomes of the three initiatives on factory remediation for fire, structural and electrical safety in the RMG sector in Bangladesh. In this blog, after a brief description of each initiative (for a broader description, see here), I will discuss the effectiveness of the remediation processes introduced by the Accord, the Alliance and the National Tripartite Plan.More...



The Ilva Case - Part 1: The Italian Chronicle of a Disaster Foretold - By Sara Martinetto

7. September 2017 Antoine Duval (0)

Editor's note: Sara Martinetto is a research intern at the T.M.C. Asser Institute. She has recently completed her LLM in Public International Law at the University of Amsterdam. She holds interests in Migration Law, Criminal Law, Human Rights and European Law, with a special focus on their transnational dimension.


More than 11000 deaths and 25000 hospitalisations: the numbers divulged by the prosecution expert report assessing the human consequence of the operation of Ilva industries in the Italian city of Taranto are staggering. The environmental disaster caused by the plant brought the whole area to its knees and, in spite of all the efforts made, is still on-going. This is the story of a never-ending conflict. A conflict between different rights, which need to be balanced; between public authorities, who bear responsibility for ensuring and protecting those rights; between different normative levels and powers, given the numerous infringement proceedings opened by the EU Commission and the most recent claims lodged to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). In the following sections I will try to shed some light on the main legal aspects of this tragic saga. For clarity, this article is divided in two posts: the first deals with the national level, while the second focuses on the supranational dimension of the case.More...