A global team from Debevoise & Plimpton LLP has authored a landmark report (the “Debevoise UNGPs Report”) in conjunction with the ‘UNGPs 10+’ project, which marks ten years since the adoption of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) by the UN Human Rights Council in 2011.
Commissioned by the United Nations Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises (“UN Working Group”), the Debevoise UNGPs report examines how judicial and quasi-judicial bodies across the globe have used and referred to the UNGPs in reaching their decisions.
Covering more than 50 national jurisdictions and 10 international and regional courts, tribunals and treaty bodies, the Debevoise UNGPs Report provides a comprehensive overview of the relevant decisions, as well as broader developments in the business and human rights sphere. It also identifies regional and international trends, and predicts how the use of the UNGPs by national and international courts and tribunals might evolve in the future.
The Debevoise UNGPs Report was developed and published as part of the UN Working Group’s own report, “Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights at 10: Taking Stock of the First Decade”, which evaluates the first ten years of the UNGPs’ implementation.
The Debevoise UNGPs Report will be officially presented to the UN Human Rights Council’s 47th session in support of the UN Working Group’s report.
The full 264 page report can be accessed here.
The report was drafted by a team of more than 60 lawyers from Debevoise’s offices across the globe. The lead authors were partners David W. Rivkin and Samantha Rowe, senior advisor Deborah Enix-Ross, associates Emily Austin, Sophia Burton, Aymeric Dumoulin, Nelson Goh, Rhianna Hoover, Merryl Lawry-White, Nadya Rouben, Katherine Seifert and Ashika Singh, trainee associate Jesse Hope, and pro bono manager Marika Somero. The Debevoise team was supported by colleagues at law firms in other jurisdictions around the world (see full list here).