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

Visual assessment methods used by designers in industry

This thesis concerns visual assessment methods that occur in the dealings of the Consultant Industrial Designer with his industrial clients. The present situation of Industrial Design consultancy in the United Kingdom is outlined in the introduction. This is followed by information on visual assessments. This information is presented from field data in the form of case studies from the personal files of the author. There are twenty case studies from six different companies, all trading in electronic goods. There are thirteen case studies of engineering goods, and seven case studies of consumer goods. In all case studies presented, the author was the principal Industrial Designer involved. In the reporting of the case studies all occasions of visual assessment are prominently noted. Supplementary information is presented from desk data in the form of published works. This data is classified into subjects on designers, the design process and techniques of visualisation, presentation and assessment. This information is analysed into the main constituents that contribute to the visual assessment methods, organised into a simple form and summarised. This summary is then synthesised into a number of models that describe the contributing constituents of visual assessment. The conclusions are presented as a series of models that describe the visual assessment methods under consideration. In the appendices are listed the formal academic submissions that supplement this thesis (Figs. 1 and 2)

Counting statistics for mesoscopic conductors with internal degrees of freedom

We consider the transport of electrons passing through a mesoscopic device possessing internal dynamical quantum degrees of freedom. The mutual interaction between the system and the conduction electrons contributes to the current fluctuations, which we describe in terms of full counting statistics. We identify conditions where this discriminates coherent from incoherent internal dynamics, and also identify and illustrate conditions under which the device acts to dynamically bunch transmitted or reflected electrons, thereby generating super-Poissonian noise.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

MANURE BMP ADOPTION AMONG NORTH DAKOTA ANIMAL FEED OPERATIONS

Regulations governing animal waste storage are primarily a state-level issue. Protecting water resources from animal waste contamination will depend upon how effective state-level animal waste regulations are in encouraging livestock producers to handle waste appropriately. Survey results from North Dakota indicate beef cattle feeding operations do not always comply with state regulations requiring adoption of manure storage BMP's. This is most likely due to incomplete inspection schedules by the regulatory agency. Statistical results suggest herd size plays a much larger role than regulation in promoting adoption of manure storage BMP's.Livestock Production/Industries,

Large scale gas injection test (Lasgit) performed at the Äspö Hard Rock Laboratory: summary report 2007

The deposition hole was closed on the 1st February 2005 signifying the start of the hydration phase. Groundwater inflow through a number of conductive discrete fractures resulted in elevated porewater pressures leading to the formation of conductive channels (piping), the extrusion of bentonite from the hole and the discharge of groundwater to the gallery floor. This problem was addressed by drilling two pressure-relief holes in the surrounding rock mass. Artificial hydration began on the 18th May 2005 after 106 days of testing. Initial attempts to raise porewater pressure in the artificial hydration arrays often resulted in the formation of preferential pathways. These pressure dependent features were not focused in one location but occurred at multiple sites at different times in the test history. These pathways appear to be relatively short lived, closing when water pressure is reduced. It was determined that both pressure relief holes should remain open until the bentonite had generated sufficient swelling pressure to withstand the high water pressure in the system when these holes are closed. Packers were installed into the pressure relief holes on 23rd March 2006 and sections in them closed off over the period to 5th July 2006. There was no repeat of the formation of piping through discrete channels so, on 20th November 2006, pressures to the artificial hydration filters on the canister were increased to 2350 kPa