Human rights in global supply chains: Measuring the effectiveness of home state regulatory models on corporate behaviour

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Andreas Rühmkorf
• Subject Area: Private Law
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 527798519

Since the adoption of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) in 2011, various national legislative developments are being aimed at turning the voluntary UNGPs into binding legal obligations for corporate human rights impacts within global supply chains. The leading examples of such laws are those of the UK, Germany, France, and the proposed EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (EU Draft Directive) which is likely to be adopted in 2023. Although these laws are built on the concepts of the UNGPs, they each follow different models in terms of scope, types of duties imposed, and level of enforcement and they are all enacted by the so-called "home states" of transnational corporations, namely those countries where the companies at the top end of global supply chains are based, including the UK and Germany. This study will investigate and compare the effect of each of these home state legal models on corporate practice. The UK and Germany are two particularly important jurisdictions in this regard as the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015, the UK Bribery Act 2010 and the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Law of 2021 (Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz or LkSG) are currently among the most prominent examples of the different legal models for national legislation in this area. For example, the UK Modern Slavery Act of 2015 was the first of this generation of laws, but it is also the most limited model, by focusing only on the single issue of modern slavery, and containing no substantive legal duties beyond reporting. For comparative purposes, it presents an opportunity to study the effects of an established transparency-based law which requires companies to report about their activities to combat human rights abuses in global supply chains. This study will fill an important gap in the literature by studying the implications of these laws on business practice. Filling this evidence gap is important for the processes of evaluating the effectiveness of existing pieces of legislation and also for the drafting of new laws in this field.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: United Kingdom
• Partner Organisation: Arts and Humanities Research Council
• Cooperation Partners: Dr. Irene Pietropaoli; Lise Smit