Filip Gregor
Head of the Responsible Companies Team
The International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR), the European Coalition for Corporate Justice (ECCJ) and the Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability (CNCA), are pleased to announce the launch of our Human Rights Due Diligence Report, the common approaches and available options resulting from the “Human Rights Due Diligence Project.”
Over the past year, our group of Experts (Mark Taylor, Professor Olivier de Schutter, Robert Thompson and Professor Anita Ramasastry) has examined the issue of how States meet their duty to protect through using their regulatory authority to encourage or mandate human rights due diligence behavior by corporations.
Their examination was informed by private consultations with over 50 lawyers, practitioners, and representatives of civil society from each continent. The report will offer the interpretation of common approaches and available options for States to meet this duty.
We will launch our report at a side event of the U.N. Forum on Business and Human Rights, with a Keynote Address from Member of European Parliament Mr. Richard Howitt.
Please join us at the Palais des Nations on 3 December 2012 for the report launch and a reception to follow at Bar Escargot.
To RSVP, please register or email Katie Shay.
Responses are appreciated before 28 November 2012.
More information about the Human Rights Due Diligence Project.
As part of the reform of the EU Non-Financial Reporting Directive, the European Commission plans to develop mandatory EU sustainability reporting standards. The analysis of the non-financial reports of 1000 European companies by the Alliance for Corporate Transparency has proven how companies fail to report relevant, specific and comparable information. While this is true for all sustainability matters, it is particularly exacerbated in the case of corporate impacts and risks along the supply chain.
The European Court of Justice has ruled that mining at Poland’s sprawling Turów coal mine must cease while the court processes a Czech government lawsuit against Poland for illegally operating the mine. The Polish mine pushes right up to the Czech and German borders and is depleting people’s water supplies and undercutting houses in nearby communities.
Local groups and NGOs including Frank Bold, that is very active in the process, welcomed the Czech government’s decision to file a lawsuit at the European Court of Justice against the Polish government for the illegal operation of the Turów lignite coal mine, which has been dug right up to the Czech and German borders, damaging local water supplies for nearby communities. This is the first such legal case for the Czech Republic and the first in EU’s history where one member state sues another for environmental reasons.
