Transnational Extractive Companies and Human Rights: The Crucial Role of Home State Regulation
Date & Time: September 29, 2014 | 07:45 PM – 07:45 PM
Location: 114 Katz Building
Penelope Simons, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, will visit Dickinson Law in Carlisle, Pa., to discuss "Transnational Extractive Companies and Human Rights: The Crucial Role of Home State Regulation." The event will be simulcast in room 114 Katz Building
Professor Simons has been engaged in research on corporate human rights accountability for over a decade. In December 1999 she participated in the Canadian Assessment Mission to Sudan (the Harker Mission), appointed by Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, to investigate allegations of slavery as well as links between oil development in Sudan and violations of human rights. Her current research is focused on the human rights implications of domestic and extraterritorial corporate activity, state responsibility for corporate complicity in human rights violations, as well as the intersections between transnational corporate activity, human rights and international economic law.
She is the co-author, with Audrey Macklin, of The Governance Gap: Extractive Industries, Human Rights, and the Home State Advantage (Routledge, 2014) which examines the human rights implications of corporate activity in zones of weak governance and argues for home state regulation. She is also a co-author with J. Anthony VanDuzer and Graham Mayada of Integrating Sustainable Development into International Investment Agreements: A Guide for Developing Country Negotiators (Commonwealth Secretariat, 2013), a book that discusses ways in which international investment treaties could be reimagined to address more effectively the sustainable development concerns of states that are parties to such agreements.