Sustainability Reporting: Case of European Stock Companies

Sustainability reporting regulations defined within NFRD (Non-Financial Reporting Directive) allow different stakeholders to assess ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) performance of companies and their impact on people and environment. ESG data is increasingly used in strategy definition of entities, investment decision-making process and valuation of stock companies. ESG information is also reflected in ESG ratings which create comprehensive measure of ESG performance of specific entity. It outlines the need for dissemination of true and fair corporate sustainability reporting system. The main purpose of undertaken work is to evaluate the trend and evolution of sustainability reporting and ESG ratings of European listed companies in 2000-2020 period. In order to deliver results comparative analysis is used. Research proves that vast majority of European stock companies do not provide enough ESG performance which does not allow to assign them with appropriate ESG rating. Findings of analysis indicate the size of sustainability reporting accountability gap and confirm that wider group of public interest entities should be subject of NFRD.

Closing the Accountability Gap in Corporate Supply Chains for Violations of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act

Over 40 million people around the world are victims of modern forms of slavery: forced labour and human trafficking. People are tricked into working under onerous conditions, and unable to leave or return home due to physical, psychological or financial coercion, and many of these trafficking victims produce goods for United States (US) and other multinational corporations that profit by relying on the lower wages earned by workers in their global supply chains. Well-developed legal standards prohibit these practices, and governments, intergovernmental organizations, business associations and non-governmental organizations have developed mechanisms to prevent, detect and provide redress to victims. Some businesses lead or comply with the standards and enforcement mechanisms, but too many do not. US law offers a powerful but under-utilized tool to address trafficking: the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), which imposes civil liability on those who ‘knew or should have known’ about forced labour or human trafficking in their corporate ventures. Unfortunately, courts have ignored or misinterpreted this standard, at times confusing civil and criminal provisions of the statute. Correct and vigorous legal enforcement is key to addressing the accountability gap between the well-developed standards and the continuing use of forced labour and human trafficking. This article is the first to demonstrate that, with regard to the TVPRA standard, corporations have long been on notice of both the obligation to effectively monitor labour conditions and the mechanisms that would accomplish that task. US courts must enforce the ‘knew or should have known’ standard to protect workers – the most vulnerable people in the supply chain – and to prevent an unfair competitive advantage over companies that have established compliance programmes that actually prevent and punish human trafficking and forced labour.

Bridging the Accountability Gap in the Protection of Internally Displaced Persons: Non-State Actors Under the Kampala Convention

Contemporary forms of internal displacement in Africa significantly reflect the emerging footprints of non-state actors on the regional landscape of internal displacement. In recognition of the impact of these actors in the internal displacement context, the African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa (Kampala Convention) specifically obligate states to regulate them in the prevention of arbitrary displacement. This is the central thrust of this article. This article examines the Kampala Convention from the perspective of non-state actors, considering the obligation of the state and the extent to which these actors may be held accountable, in the furtherance of protection and assistance of internally displaced persons (IDP s).

Reconsidering Access to Justice within the Broad Range of Accountability of International Organizations

This article reconsiders the generally accepted view around UN peacekeeping, and focuses on ways to enable access to judicial remedies for victims as a solution to fill the prevailing “accountability gap.” This article shows that the concept is not necessarily synonymous with access to justice. Providing access to justice for the victims can be an essential factor in holding UN peacekeeping legally accountable. However, judicial review is not everything in terms of accountability. This article also analyzes the possibilities and limitations of quasi-judicial mechanisms, namely the Independent Accountability Mechanisms of International Financial Institutions and the Human Rights Advisory Panel of the UN Interim Mission in Kosovo, from the perspective of legal accountability. It shows that these mechanisms have contributed to holding the organizations concerned legally accountable.

Human rights and the impacts of climate change: Revisiting the assumptions

The Paris Agreement acknowledges the need to tackle the permanent and irreversible impacts of climate change. It does not, however, provide means to hold state and non-state actors accountable for the harm to persons, property and the environment associated with climate change. In 2009 , the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) noted that qualifying the effects of climate change as human rights violations posed a series of technical obstacles. More than a decade later, applicants around the world increasingly rely on human rights law and institutions to complain about harms associated with the impacts of climate change. National, regional and international human rights bodies stand on the frontline to bridge the accountability gap left by the Paris Agreement. This article therefore revisits the OHCHR’s assumptions, suggesting that we use human rights as an interim “gap-filler”, while we seek better tools to tackle the impacts of climate change. El Acuerdo de París reconoce la necesidad de abordar los efectos permanentes e irreversibles del cambio climático. Sin embargo, no proporciona medios para hacer a los actores estatales y no estatales responsables del daño relacionado con el cambio climático infligido a personas, propiedades y al medio ambiente. En 2009, la Oficina del Alto Comisionado para los Derechos Humanos (ACNUDH) hizo notar que calificar los efectos del cambio climático como violaciones de derechos humanos presentaba algunos obstáculos técnicos. Más de una década después, solicitantes de todo el mundo se apoyan cada vez más en la jurisdicción sobre derechos humanos y sobre instituciones para protestar por los daños relacionados con el efecto del cambio climático. Entes nacionales, regionales e internacionales sobre derechos humanos están en la primera línea de lucha para cubrir el hueco sobre responsabilidad dejado por el Acuerdo de París. Este artículo revisita los supuestos aceptados por la ACNUDH, y propone que se utilicen los derechos humanos como un “parche” provisional mientras buscamos mejores instrumentos para abordar el efecto del cambio climático.

Bridging the Accountability Gap

During non-international armed conflict, war crimes often go unpunished in areas where state authorities are unable to enforce the law. While states are under a customary law obligation to investigate and prosecute war crimes committed on their territory or by their nationals, the Customary International Humanitarian Law Study of the International Committee of the Red Cross has not found that this obligation extends to armed non-state actors (ANSAs). Nevertheless, command responsibility requires the individual commander to punish their forces in case war crimes have been committed and a growing amount of state practice demanding similar commitments — both legally and politically — from these actors as such can be observed over the past two decades. Indeed, ANSAs routinely impose penal sanctions onto their subordinates and often establish judicial structures in order to do so. This article argues that whereas ANSAs should be under some form of obligation to ensure accountability, alternative solutions to makeshift courts and penal proceedings might be better suited to prevent impunity and maintain fair trial guarantees.

The Action for Damages as a Fundamental Rights Remedy: Holding Frontex Liable

Frontex has become one of the major players in European external border management. As its powers and resources have increased, so have the challenges surrounding its compliance with fundamental rights. A major concern continues to be how to ensure legal accountability for fundamental rights violations that occur in the context of its activities. While Member States can be held accountable before their own national courts and before international courts, neither of these options are available in relation to Frontex. But it can be brought before the Court of Justice of the European Union to account for the conformity of its conduct with EU law. This Article explores the potential of the EU action for damages to offer a remedy for fundamental rights violations committed by Frontex. It identifies where public liability law falls short of providing a remedy for fundamental rights violations committed by EU bodies, explores the possibilities to close that gap, and assesses the implications this has for Frontex’s liability. The Article argues that the action for damages may be the means to close the accountability gap in the specific case of Frontex, but also more generally in circumstances where EU administration is delivered in the form of informal or factual conduct. If it is to fulfill that role, the CJEU would have to lower the threshold for EU liability where fundamental rights are concerned.

The Right to Perform Rescue at Sea: Jurisprudence and Drowning

Framing largescale migrant drownings as violations of international law has so far not been a straightforward task. The failures of doing so, both in scholarship and in activism, have often revealed important limitations of international law, and a form of rightlessness that is hard-wired in it. Through an assessment of arguments about drowning, framed in the vocabularies of the right to life, refugee law, the law of the sea, and international criminal law, difficulties surrounding the notion of jurisdiction persist: The maritime space has often functioned as a kind of “legal black hole.” Considering such difficulties, this Article suggests that shifting the focus from migrant rights to the civil and political rights of volunteers coming to the rescue, may help in closing the accountability gap. It thus seeks to articulate and conceptualize a form of maritime civil disobedience among rescue volunteers, which may provide the link for eliminating migrant rightlessness at sea.