Almost a billion people do not have access to clean and safe water. Access to safe drinking water and sanitation is increasingly being considered a fundamental human right. Corporations play an important role in the realization of the right to water. For example, they can become violators of the...

This article examines the principles of accountability applied by the European Investment Bank in comparison with the practices of other Multilateral Lending Institutions. After a brief description of the EIB and its activities, the substantive and procedural principles governing the EIB's...

The article deals with the question of whether and why corporations are human rights subjects by analysing the different approaches of regional economic courts and regional human rights courts. For some of these courts, protecting corporate human rights is the natural response to the key role...

This book, through various differently oriented chapters, tries to give an insight on how the European Union and its multilevel model of governance must try to strike a balance between diverging interests and priorities. In particular, the EU and the European states (including the CoE's Members)...

In November 2010, the International Standardization Organization (ISO) published the ‘International Guidance Standard on Social Responsibility - ISO 26000’ (ISO 26000). ISO 26000 is a voluntary international standard that provides guidance to companies and other organizations on social...

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become a fixture on the agendas of corporate boards in much the same way as environmental issues did a decade or so ago. To what extent social responsibilities should be made legally enforceable remains a matter of some fierce debate. There are already...

This essay attempts to construct a normative justification for the imposition of human rights duties on transnational corporations (TNCs) that commit environmental wrongs in the developing world. Under the now near-hegemonic worldview of welfare economics, TNCs are analogised to individuals...

The article assesses the phenomenon of “de-humanization” of human rights with respect to two highly contrasting examples: “corporate human rights” and the “Rights of Nature” movement. It analyses the approaches regional human rights courts and regional courts of economic integration...

Are human rights to be found in living instruments and practices that adapt to changing circumstances, or must they be interpreted according to their original meaning? That question, so heavily debated in the context of the rights of the U.S. Constitution, was never seriously on the table until...

Business-related human rights abuses remain endemic in Europe and globally. European actors have implemented measures to address business-related human rights abuses both prior and subsequent to the United Nations 2011 Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, a central reference point of...