2018 United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights

Interpretation is provided into Spanish. 

Organized by OHCHR

Brief description of the session:
This session will discuss the relationship between human rights due diligence and determinations of corporate legal liability under national law for business-related human rights abuses. The OHCHR’s Accountability and Remedy Project Part I, an initiative aimed at strengthening implementation by States of the Access to Remedy Pillar of the UNGPs, identified a need for greater clarity about the different ways in which the exercise of human rights due diligence and corporate legal liability may interrelate. In June 2018, OHCHR published a report providing analysis and clarification of the relationship between human rights due diligence and determinations of corporate liability. The session will introduce the discussions and conclusions from this report.
 The session will also draw on the Working Group’s 2018 report to the General Assembly, where it takes stock of efforts to implement human rights due diligence. Further, the session will review recent legislative and policy developments, explore questions that arise when thinking about how human rights due diligence and liability interact, and discuss ways to improve policy coherence between States’ implementation of the access to remedy pillar of the UNGPs and their efforts to promote human rights due diligence among business enterprises in accordance with the UNGPs.

Session objectives:

• Unpack the relationship between human rights due diligence as described in the UNGPs, and determinations of corporate legal liability for business-related human rights offenses.

Key discussion questions:

• In what ways are determinations of legal liability currently influenced by companies’ exercise of human rights due diligence?
• When should States require companies to conduct human rights due diligence through legislation?
• What other measures may provide effective incentives for companies to conduct meaningful human rights due diligence as opposed to ‘check-box’ exercises?

Format of the session:

•  Roundtable discussion

Background to the discussion:
Under the UNGPs, “human rights due diligence” refers to the processes and activities by which businesses reasonably identify, prevent, mitigate, and account for how they address their adverse human rights impacts. Human rights due diligence is integral to meeting the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, and the UNGPs provide important guidance as to the key elements of human rights due diligence and the basic standards that should be observed. However, despite the centrality of human rights due diligence in the UNGPs, there remain many different views as to what is entailed and how this intersects with legal liability in law and practice.
 The work carried out in the course of OHCHR’s Accountability and Remedy Project Part I (ARP I) highlights the need for human rights due diligence concepts to be appropriately integrated into relevant domestic law regimes and for relevant State agencies and judicial bodies to have access to, and take regulatory and enforcement decisions by reference to, robust and credible guidance and standards. Following up on the ARP I report, OHCHR organized a consultation in October 2017 to further unpack the relationship between human rights due diligence and determinations of legal liability. A report was developed following this consultation which explores regulatory options that exist for improving corporate accountability in business and human rights cases, and discusses risks and opportunities of different approaches. The report also explores some of the difficult questions that arise when thinking about how human rights due diligence and legal liability interact, such as whether there are circumstances in which failure to carry out human rights due diligence itself should be cause for liability, even if no harm can be shown to have occurred. This Forum session provides an opportunity to take stock of current State approaches and recent legal developments, and to discuss how and when a failure to exercise human rights due diligence can give rise to corporate liability.

Interpretation is provided into Spanish

Session led by the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights 

Brief description
In many cases of business-related human rights abuses, it becomes necessary for affected individuals and communities to seek remedies against a parent company for abuses by its subsidiaries. However, the current legal principles governing the allocation of responsibility among companies of a corporate group do not generally allow victims to hold a parent company accountable even in legitimate cases. This is one of the well-documented barriers faced by victims in seeking access to effective remedies. The Commentary to Principle 26 also acknowledges that the “way in which legal responsibility is attributed among members of a corporate group under domestic criminal and civil laws facilitates the avoidance of appropriate accountability”.
In recent years, courts in certain jurisdictions like the United Kingdom and Canada have ruled that in certain circumstances a parent company may owe a direct duty of care towards employees of its subsidiaries or communities affected by its subsidiaries. How useful could this tortious principle be in making parent companies accountable in the full range of business-related human rights abuses cases? Or are other reforms – including of corporate laws – needed to ensure a fair allocation of responsibility among companies of a corporate group? Principle 3(b) of the UNGPs, for example, provides that states should ensure that “laws and policies governing the creation and ongoing operation of business enterprises, such as corporate law, do not constrain but enable business respect for human rights”.

Session objectives
This session aims to: (i) inquire rationales behind the divide between the “legal separation” among companies of a group and the “economic unity”; (ii) assess the potential and limits of the direct duty of care principle in holding parent companies accountable for human rights related to their subsidiaries; and (iii) explore other law-cum-policy reform options that could assist victims in seeking effective remedies against parent companies in appropriate cases.

Discussion questions
To achieve the above objectives, the following illustrative questions will guide the discussion:

1. Should companies of a group be allowed to operate as “one” and “separate” at the same time?
2. What lessons can businesses and affected communities learn from cases concerning the direct duty of care decided so far in the UK and Canada? Are there similar precedents in other jurisdictions?
3. What are the limitations of the current direct duty of care test developed by courts? What challenges lawyers face in establishing such a duty of care on the part of parent companies?
4. Apart from tort law, could we learn any lessons from rules concerning attribution of liability within corporate groups under other laws such as tax law, competition law, terrorism law and cyber law?
5. Would mandatory human rights due diligence help in establishing the direct duty of care and in turn holding a parent company accountable for human rights abuses related to its subsidiaries?
6. What legal or policy reforms could encourage parent companies to identify, prevent and mitigate human rights risks associated with the operations of their subsidiaries?

Format of the session
This session will be organised as an interview-style discussion with panellists. After an initial round of questions posed to the panellists by the moderator, participants will be invited to ask questions or make general comments about the session theme.