Description

What is MHRDD, what are the implications and why does it matter?

The adverse impacts of the private sector on human rights and its responsibility for addressing such impacts have long been a matter of concern in global governance. In recent years, social pressure to introduce mandatory human rights due diligence (MHRDD) regulations have gained momentum, with the support for such laws growing even amongst businesses, particularly those well-versed in corporate social responsibility. For them, regulation would level the playing field, and increase accountability across the supply network. Internationally, France, Germany and Norway, have all recently adopted HRDD regulations. The European Commission’s Draft Directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence, would establish mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence directive at the EU level. In the UK, there is an ongoing legislative campaign to introduce HRDD legislation modelled on the Bribery Act, which adopts the ‘prevent to prevent’ mechanism for human rights harms. In this seminar, Dr Lisa Hsin, postdoctoral fellow in Business and Human Rights, University of Oxford and Adjunct Research Fellow of the EW Barker Centre for Law and Business will outline recent regulatory developments internationally, outline practical implications of such regimes, and consider how a ‘failure to prevent’ model could change the legal landscape.

SPEAKER BIO

Dr Lisa Hsin is a Research Fellow in Business and Human Rights at the Law Faculty of the University of Oxford where she teaches at postgraduate and undergraduate levels. She obtained her DPhil at the University of Oxford and her LLM from the University of California, Berkeley. Before joining academia, Lisa was an associate at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in London specialising in commercial dispute resolution and corporate investigations. She is a qualified Barrister and Solicitor in New Zealand, and a Solicitor with Higher Rights in England and Wales.

Lisa’s research interests include critically examining Business and Human Rights scholarship including initiatives calling for mandatory Human Rights Due Diligence (‘mHRDD’). Lisa’s doctoral research concerns the intersection of legal regimes, which require large businesses to address social and environmental issues in supply chains. Lisa has written on issues relating to corporate compliance, modern slavery in supply chains. In 2020, Lisa led a joint research project with the British Institute of International and Comparative Law funded by the UK Research and Innovation Strategic Priorities Fund and the Modern Slavery Policy and Evidence on the effectiveness of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, including a comparison of corporate enforcement mechanisms. In 2022, Lisa advised the Business and Human Rights Unit of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on regulatory initiatives relating to the technology sector.

MODERATOR BIO

Ernest Lim is Vice Dean for Faculty Development and Professor at the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore (NUS). He obtained his DPhil and BCL from Oxford, LLM from Harvard and LLB from NUS. His research interests include comparative corporate law and governance as well as private law, focusing on AI and sustainability. He is the sole-author of three monographs with Cambridge University Press: A Case for Shareholders’ Fiduciary Duties in Common Law Asia (2019), which won the Society of Legal Scholars Peter Birks Runner-Up Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship; Sustainability and Corporate Mechanisms in Asia (2020), and Social Enterprises in Asia: A New Legal Form (2023). He is the co-editor of the forthcoming The Cambridge Handbook of Private Law and Artificial Intelligence. He has advised financial institutions, companies and non-governmental organisations on corporate and securities law. Prior to joining academia, he was a capital markets attorney in the New York office of Davis Polk.