2021 Symposium

On February 26, 2021, we partnered with the UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs and the Corporate Accountability Lab to host a symposium to address issues of corporate accountability. The lineup featured leading lawyers, scholars and activists, with a keynote from Michael Fakhri, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.

The second day of the symposium on February 27, 2021, was co-sponsored by UCLA Law’s Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs and the International and Comparative Law Program. This second day’s programming discussed future legal challenges in digital privacy and data collection, the creation of space law and policy, and explored sanctions and human rights enforcement.

2021 Symposium Keynote Speech Human Trafficking in the International Food Supply Chain Corporate Liability for International and Transnational Crimes The Corporation as Global Superpower (Panel) AI, Data Privacy, & Future Technologies The Corporation as a Global Superpower (Workshop) Sanctions and Human Rights Enforcement (Workshop) AI, Surveillance, and Digital Privacy Space: Humankind’s Last, Best Hope for Peace? Sanctions and Human Rights Enforcement (Panel)

Keynote Speech

Michael Fakhri, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.

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Day 1: Panel 1

Human Trafficking in the International Food Supply Chain

This panel addressed the current legal environment around forced labor, trafficking, and slavery in the food supply chain. Food sectors including chocolate and seafood have been found to have endemic problems with slavery and trafficking.

This panel addressed the current legal landscape and proposed technological and practical solutions to hold wealthy corporations accountable for what is happening in their supply chain.

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Day 1: Concurrent Panel 1a

Corporate Liability for International and Transnational Crimes

Corporations sometimes facilitate crimes across country borders. This panel examined recent and ongoing cases regarding criminal activity that is aided and abetted from abroad by corporations.

In particular, the panel discussed recent transmissions to the ICC regarding war crimes; aiding and abetting jurisprudence in various legal systems around the world; the transnational laws around human trafficking; and holding corporations accountable civilly for funding paramilitary groups.

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Panelists

Moderator

  • Cathy Sweetser, Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA School of Law

MCLE Reading

Day 1: concurrent Panel 1b

The Corporation as Global Superpower (Panel)

Corporate Capture, Corporate Influence, and International Human Rights Law: Multinational corporations have continued to assert increasing influence on states and their decision making.

How does the influence of corporations on state power affect the creation and enforcement of human rights law? How can countries hold corporations accountable when the corporations are larger than the countries by an order of magnitude?

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Panelists

  • Anita Ramasastry, University of Washington School of Law, United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights
  • Surya Deva, City University of Hong Kong
  • Dominic Renfrey, Center for Constitutional Rights

Moderator

MCLE Reading

day 2: Paper Workshop 1

AI, Data Privacy, & Future Technologies

Workshop Participants

  • Misha Nayak-Oliver, Just Fair UK:
    Corporate Activity Compounding Intersectional Inequities: Rethinking AI Regulation to Protect ESCR in the UK
  • Dorothy Vinsky, LLM Candidate at UCLA School of Law:
    Lessons from Standard Oil for Facebook and Google
  • Scott Shackelford, Indiana University Kelley School of Business with,
  • Isak Nti Asare, Indiana University Bloomington, Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies with,
  • Rachel Dockery, Indiana University Maurer School of Law with,
  • Angie Raymond, Indiana University Maurer School of Law with,
  • Alexandra Sergueeva, Indiana University Bloomington:
    Should We Trust a Black Box to Safeguard Human Rights? A Comparative Analysis of AI Governance
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Workshop Moderator

day 2: Paper Workshop 2

The Corporation as a Global Superpower (Workshop)

Workshop Participants

  • Alveena Shah, Dechert LLP:
    Leasing the Rain: Water, Privatization, and Human Rights
  • Timothy Webster, Western New England University School of Law:
    South Korea Shatters the Paradigm: Corporate Liability, Historical Accountability, and the Second World War
  • Mara González Souto, JD Candidate at UCLA School of Law:
    Through the ATS Door, Now What?: The Prevalence of MNC Misconduct, Disguise & Manipulation
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Workshop Moderator

Day 2: Paper Workshop 3

Sanctions and Human Rights Enforcement (Workshop)

Workshop Participants

  • Marina Aksenova, IE Law School:
    Three Potential Problems of Establishing Corporate Facilitation under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court
  • Jernej Letnar Černič, European School of Law, New University:
    Enforcement Mechanisms Under the Potential United Nations Business and Human Rights Treaty: An Exploration
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Workshop Moderator

Day 2: Concurrent Panel 1a

AI, Surveillance, and Digital Privacy

The growing concerns regarding corporate social responsibility surrounding digital privacy, facial recognition, artificial intelligence, and the monetization of personal information has begun to gain ground in the legal field.

What are the legal and political limits on how corporations govern themselves and the data they have collected? How realistically can international law prevent and mitigate human rights violations due to new and future technologies?

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Day 2: Concurrent Panel 1b

Space: Humankind’s Last, Best Hope for Peace?

The space race between the West and East in the middle of the twentieth century resulted in a number of technological developments and captivated the imagination of a generation.

Now, in the twenty-first century, the space race has become increasingly privatized, and private companies—rather than the government—have begun to propose their own agendas for humanity’s future in space. Elon Musk wants SpaceX to take private citizens to Mars. NASA wants to partially privatize the International Space Station. Jeff Bezos founded corporation Blue Origin, which envisions “millions of people living and working in space.”

As these private firms expand their activities in space and new enterprises enter the market, what legal frameworks should guide and constrain their behavior? How can international law, including existing international human rights law, hold corporate actors accountable in space?

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day 2: concurrent Panel 1c

Sanctions and Human Rights Enforcement (Panel)

Multilateral and unilateral sanctions are a frequent tool of states to halt access to the international financial system of human rights violators. Corporations play a role in both the perpetration and penalization of international human rights violations.

How effective are sanctions as an accountability mechanism, and what is the role of financial institutions? Have sanctions for human rights abuses as part of international or bilateral trade agreements been effective tools for enforcement? What potential do international human rights mechanisms offer, and how can this best be realized?

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