Human rights in global supply chains: Measuring the effectiveness of home state regulatory models on corporate behaviour

This project is funded by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)'s Arts and Humanity Research Council (AHRC) in collaboration with the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of its UK-German research partnership investment.

Since the adoption of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) in 2011, various national legislative developments are being aimed at turning the voluntary UNGPs into binding legal obligations for corporate human rights impacts within global supply chains. The leading examples of such laws are those of the UK, Germany, France, Norway, and the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). Although these laws are built on the concepts of the UNGPs, they each follow different models in terms of scope, types of duties imposed, and level of enforcement, and they are all enacted by the 'home states' of transnational corporations, namely those countries where the companies at the top end of global supply chains are based, including the UK and Germany. The new laws introduce novel duties for companies regarding their external impacts on human rights in their global value chains.

This project investigates and compares the effect of each of these home state legal models on corporate practice. The focus is on eight jurisdictions in which key developments have or are taking place: the UK, Germany, France, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the EU, and the forced labour import bans already in existence in the US and currently proposed by the EU.

This is a three-year project starting in February 2024. The project is jointly implemented by BIICL (UK team led by Dr. Irene Pietropaoli, Senior Fellow in Business and Human Rights) and Westfälische Hochschule (German team led by Prof. Andreas Rühmkorf, Professor of German and International Commercial Law).

For further information, please contact Dr. Irene Pietropaoli