Human rights on the altar of the market: the Blackstone letters and the financialisation of housing

This article analyses the recent exchange of letters between two UN human rights mandate-holders and the Blackstone Group LP, a private equity firm with significant investments in the rental housing market in multiple jurisdictions. The mandate-holders argue that Blackstone’s investments are causing serious harm to the right to housing, including retrogressing affordability, and increasing evictions, homelessness and housing-related poverty. The scale of investment displaces communities and reshapes the housing landscape for the next generation. Blackstone’s rebuttal was, in part, predicated on their subservience to market forces and their obeying the law in all jurisdictions. This is largely accurate, indicating that markets and their constitutive rules permit and incentivise retrogressive housing outcomes. The paper therefore argues that promoting socio-economic rights under financialised globalisation requires challenging the engrained norms of marketisation. International human rights law provides an entry point for this project

Irremediable impacts and unaccountable contributors: the possibility of a trust fund for victims to remedy large-scale human rights impacts

Corporate actions often adversely impact human rights in ways that are not easily justiciable. Such actions include the production and use of fossil fuels, contributing to climate change and its impacts, and actions that deny or retrogress access to the global food, housing and pharmaceutical markets. This paper terms the impacts caused by these actions ‘large-scale impacts’. Large-scale impacts feature multiple contributors, disparate victims, and no clear line of causation for establishing individual liability, and they often stem from legally permitted economic activity. This paper argues that the corporate responsibility to respect human rights – pillar two of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) – provides a useful framework for: (1) capturing the harm that such impacts cause, and (2) holding a wide range of businesses accountable for their contribution. However, the remedial mechanisms under pillar three of the UNGPs, as currently constituted, are ill-suited to such impacts. To correct this gap, this paper proposes the establishment of a Trust Fund for Victims, into which all corporate contributors to large-scale impacts would pay and against which victims could claim. Such a mechanism could significantly improve corporate accountability in the context of economic globalisation

Human Rights and Political Economy: Addressing the Legal Construction of Poverty and Rights Deprivation

There has been a recent resurgence in scholarly work concerned with the economics of human rights. This article builds on this work to develop a conceptual framework of human rights and political economy. It provides a theoretical basis for the turn to human rights and economics, rooted in the increasing micro-management of the economy by liberal states that can constitute the state planning of material distribution within the state. It demonstrates that human rights principles do apply to economic questions and elaborates methods and practices to realize the potential of rights in this arena. The article applies these methods and conceptualizations to state obligations and business responsibilities to excavate current limits and potentials of rights and contextualizes the project within left critiques of rights and “claim right” perspectives

Challenging the Commodification of Human Rights: The Case of the Right to Housing

The profitability of commodified housing is driving extreme levels of corporate investment. To boost profits investors are exploiting “undervalued” low-income housing, evicting vulnerable individuals, hoarding land and charging exploitative fees. This is causing severe harm to individuals’ right to housing across the globe, including, inter alia, rapidly increasing prices and debt, increasing evictions, homelessness, and increased recourse to substandard accommodation. The harm is endemic, but the human rights response has been tepid. This paper argues that both state obligations and the content of the right to housing under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) can usefully address the problem. However, in communications with State Parties the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) addresses issues of commodification and affordability in vague terms that fail to generate meaningful obligations. The paper grounds the CESCR’s approach in theories of enforceability which argue that enforcement is more practicable when “clear violations” can be established. The CESCR offers clear statements of breach only when identifying explicitly wrongful practices, such as discriminatory laws. This approach, however, almost entirely occludes harm caused by the marketization of human rights. It skeletonizes the “protect” limb of state obligations, permits the long-term retrogression of affordability and enables the serious subsequent effects. The paper proposes that “clear violations” can be constructed from the results of, and laws constituting, harmful marketization. A three-stage process of identification of breach, standard-setting, and policy suggestions is recommended that can turn the long-term retrogression of access to housing into specific, measurable statements of violations and recommendations. This same approach is advocated for business responsibilities under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, with the content of these responsibilities also evaluated

Climate Litigation Unleashed: Catalysing Action against States and Corporations

This report follows the discussions at the one-day workshop ‘Climate Litigation Unleashed: Catalysing Action against States and Corporations’ held on 22 November 2023 at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights in Oxford

Power, Participation, and Private Regulatory Initiatives: Human Rights Under Supply Chain Capitalism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021) Edited by Daniel Brinks, Julia Dehm, Karen Engle and Kate Taylor

Book revie

How European Human Rights Law Will Reshape U.S. Business

In recent years several European states have enacted human rights due diligence laws, culminating in the imminent EU-wide Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. This article provides a comprehensive analysis of these laws and explores their potential impact on U.S. businesses. Human rights due diligence emerges from the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (2011) and was originally conceived as a voluntary means by which corporations could demonstrate that they proactively monitor and manage potential human rights abuses within their corporate group and supply chains. Since 2017, European states have begun enacting binding human rights due diligence laws. These laws are innately extraterritorial in nature, designed to ensure that corporations that operate in the European market comply with human rights standards throughout their value chain, including through their suppliers and business partners. The emergence of European due diligence laws will thus impact U.S. businesses and industries: an estimated 10,000 U.S. businesses will be directly affected, and far more will have to comply as a result of supplying or partnering with EU-based firms. The effect on U.S. business could be dramatic, particularly with major divergences between the EU and United States in relation to labor law and other legal regimes. The article analyzes how U.S. businesses will be affected, what businesses may need to do, and how divergent legal regimes may be addressed. It further discusses options for the U.S. Government to take a proactive approach to the European incursion on U.S. law and business in the interest of protecting rights while providing business certainty

Business Strategy as Human Rights Risk: the Case of Private Equity

In this article, we apply the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights to the private equity (PE) business model. PE firms often adopt a controversial, ‘value extractive’, business model based on high debt and extreme cost-cutting to generate investor returns. PE firms own large numbers of companies, including in many rights-related sectors. The model is linked to increased human rights risks to workers, housing tenants, and in privatized health and social care. We map these risks and analyse the human rights responsibilities of PE firms. Our analysis has major implications for understandings of human rights responsibility. We argue that value extractive methods are the root cause of eventual harm to human rights, even though they may not harm rights directly. To respect human rights, PE firms must mitigate the risks of these value extractive methods. We define how human rights due diligence (HRDD) could achieve this and argue that given the extent of harm and the lack of a business case for adopting such a view of human rights responsibility, business strategy level HRDD should be a core component of forthcoming HRDD laws

Research Handbook on Human Rights and Business

This authoritative Research Handbook brings together leading international scholars and practitioners to provide in-depth analysis of some of the most hotly debated topics and issues concerning the interface of human rights and business. Offering critical insights on prominent strands of research within the field of business and human rights, this comprehensive Research Handbook examines key challenges and potential solutions in the field