Macquarie Law Seminar Series 2022

The Macquarie Law Seminar Series will be presented by Professor Surya Deva from Macquarie Law School

The seminar will be presented via zoom. You will receive a zoom link once you have registered to this seminar.

Mandatory Human Rights Due Diligence Laws in Europe: A Panacea or a Mirage for Rights Holders?

Mandatory human rights due diligence (HRDD) laws in the European Union (EU) – both enacted and in the making – seem to be the most promising tool to harden soft international standards in the business and human rights (BHR) field, the most prominent of these being the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs).

This seminar will provide a two-layered critique of mandatory HRDD laws. It will problematise the very concept of HRDD as articulated by the UNGPs. Professor Deva will argue that due to various conceptual, operational and structural limitations, HRDD alone will not bring the desired changes for rights holders. The second layer of critique will focus on the content of mandatory HRDD laws enacted in France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Norway and Germany. Assessing these laws vis-à-vis six preconditions required to protect effectively people and the planet from business-related harms, it is clear that these mandatory HRDD laws are half-hearted attempts to tame business-related human rights abuses and hold the relevant corporate actors accountable.

In addition to developing more ambitious mandatory HRDD laws in future, states should employ a range of additional regulatory tools that pay greater attention to achieving outcomes, drawing red lines in certain situations, and promoting access to remedy and corporate accountability.

Biography

Surya Deva is a Professor at the Macquarie Law School, Sydney, and a member of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights. His primary research interests lie in business and human rights, India-China constitutional law and sustainable development. Professor Deva has published extensively in these areas, and has advised various UN bodies, governments, multinational corporations and civil society organisations on matters related to business and human rights. Prior to joining Macquarie University, he taught at the School of Law of City University of Hong Kong, the National Law Institute University Bhopal and the University of Delhi. Professor Deva is one of the founding Editors-in-Chief of the Business and Human Rights Journal, and sits on the Editorial/Advisory Board of the Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, the Vienna Journal on International Constitutional Law, the Indian Law Review, and the Australian Journal of Human Rights. He is an elected member of the Executive Committee of the International Association of Constitutional Law (2018-22).