Date:04Apr 2019
Human Rights Seminar Series – Advancing the UN Business and Human Rights Treaty Project Through International Criminal Law: Ensuring Legitimacy and Effectiveness by Dr Jonathan Kolieb RMIT University, Australia
The current United Nations process drafting a Business and Human Rights treaty employs international human rights law as its paradigmatic frame of reference, including for the scope of corporations’ legal obligations. Applying an evaluative framework based on Thomas Franck, Robert Keohane and David Victor’s works on the legitimacy and effectiveness of international law and governance, this seminar critiques the use of international human rights law for this purpose. Instead, due to several conceptual and practical advantages, it argues that the set of corporate human rights obligations to be enshrined in this first treaty should be based on the narrower scope of international criminal law.
Jonathan Kolieb is Senior Lecturer in Law at the Graduate School of Business and Law, RMIT University. He holds degrees from the University of Melbourne (PhD; B.A./LL.B.), the University of California-Berkeley (LL.M; M.A.) and Monash University (B.A.-Hons) and has been a visiting fellow at Australian National University and George Washington University. Jonathan has been engaged as an external legal consultant by the United Nations’ Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, and as research partner of Australian Red Cross. His research interests focus on global governance issues, including projects on the legal protections of children in armed conflict and the human rights obligations of transnational corporations operating in conflict-affected areas.Show lessComments
