Online-Symposium: Tackling Human Rights, Environmental Protection and Business – A Multilevel Approach

Rethinking Corporate Social Responsibility in Times of Armed Conflict

This contribution introduces the emerging concept of “geopolitical responsibility,” arguing that companies can actively shape or intensify international conflicts through their economic activities. It traces how existing soft law instruments, such as the UN Guiding Principles and OECD Guidelines, already call for heightened corporate due diligence in conflict-affected areas. Yet, binding frameworks like the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive overlook this geopolitical dimension, leaving a growing gap between theory and corporate practice.

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Stellungnahme / Völkerrecht

Ist das Völkerrecht wirklich ohnmächtig?[1]

In Prof. Giegerichs neuem Beitrag, der auf seinen Vortrag im Rahmen der Veranstaltung „Die Ohnmacht des Völkerrechts – Die Rückkehr des Kriegs und der Menschheitsverbrechen“ in der Villa Lessing zurückgeht, widerspricht der Autor entschieden der Annahme, das Völkerrecht habe angesichts aktueller globaler Krisen seine Wirkungskraft verloren. Er zeigt, dass das Völkerrecht trotz struktureller Schwächen seit Jahrhunderten als Ordnungskraft besteht und sich in jeder großen Krise weiterentwickelt hat.

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Online-Symposium: Tackling Human Rights, Environmental Protection and Business – A Multilevel Approach

The Stateless Worker Problem: Linking Nationality Law Discrimination to EU Corporate Due Diligence

This contribution examines how gender-discriminatory nationality laws create stateless populations excluded from formal labor markets, revealing a major blind spot in corporate governance and due diligence frameworks. By linking this issue to the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), it calls for expanding the directive’s scope to address nationality-based exclusion as a core human-rights risk.

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Online-Symposium: Tackling Human Rights, Environmental Protection and Business – A Multilevel Approach

Fast-Tracking the Green Transition in the EU: How RED III May Shield Corporations from Human Rights Accountability

This Saar Brief explores how the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive (RED III), while designed to fast-track the green transition, may inadvertently weaken corporate accountability for human rights and environmental impacts. It calls for integrating binding due diligence and human-rights obligations into the EU’s climate framework to ensure that the transition is not only fast, but also fair and sustainable.

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Online-Symposium: Tackling Human Rights, Environmental Protection and Business – A Multilevel Approach

The Contested Soul of Corporate Accountability: Navigating the CSDDD’s Ambition and Its Political Unravelling

The first contribution to our Symposium analyses the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) as a landmark step in the EU’s move from voluntary corporate responsibility to binding accountability. It traces how this ambitious project, once seen as a breakthrough, is now facing systematic political rollback that threatens to undermine its enforcement mechanisms and weaken its promise of effective corporate justice.

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