“The devastating human rights implications of the global COVID-19 pandemic have been thoroughly documented:Civil society has exposed the failure of many governments to protect their citizens and of many businesses to respect human rights in accordance with the UN Guiding Principles on Business & Human Rights. Workers are routinely forced to work without adequate equipment to protect them from contracting the disease, are denied paid sick leave when they get sick or need to self-isolate and are laid off without notice or compensation. To what extent does the corporate responsibility to respect human rights translate into liability for failure to do so?”
Moving Toward Shared Responsibility: How the EU’s CSDDD and Omnibus I Reimagine Contracting for Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence
For decades, the legal architecture for managing human rights and environmental (HRE) risks in global supply chains has relied on a practice we call ‘risk-shifting’. In this model, lead firms use …