New book: Dr. Gamze Erdem Türkelli, “Children’s Rights and Business: Governing Obligations and Responsibility” (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

Children’s Rights and Business: Governing Obligations and Responsibility, Gamze Erdem Türkelli (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

Children’s Rights and Business: Governing Obligations and Responsibility is a comprehensive legal inquiry into children’s rights and business. Relying on insights from various disciplines, the book illustrates the need for a children-focused inquiry on business and human rights. An analysis of the norm legalization process around the regulation of business and human rights, particularly of children’s rights follows the inquiry into existing hard and soft law regulatory frameworks on children’s rights and business. The book goes on to evaluate the promise of these frameworks in light of globalized business transactions through the lens of in-depth case illustrations on children’s rights in cotton and mineral supply chains and children’s rights in large-scale energy and transport investment projects. Finally, it concludes with a normative outlook on governing the children’s rights obligations of businesses and responsibility when violations occur, drawing on global governance approaches.

Dr. Gamze Erdem Türkelli, an LDRN member, is a Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO) appointed post-doctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp Law Faculty – Law and Development Research Group (an LDRN partner institution).

New book: Dr. Kinnari Bhatt, “Concessionaires, Financiers and Communities: Implementing Indigenous Peoples’ Rights to Land in Transnational Development Projects” (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

Concessionaires, Financiers and Communities: Implementing Indigenous Peoples’ Rights to Land in Transnational Development Projects, Kinnari Bhatt (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

Unrelenting demands for energy, infrastructure and natural resources, and the need for developing states to augment income and signal an ‘enterprise-ready’ attitude mean that transnational development projects remain a common tool for economic development. Yet little is known about the fragmented legal framework of private financial mechanisms, contractual clauses and discretionary behaviours that shape modern development projects. How do gaps and biases in formal laws cope with the might of concessionaires and financiers and their algorithmic contractual and policy technicalities negotiated in private offices? What impacts do private legal devices have for the visibility and implementation of Indigenous peoples’ rights to land? This original perspective on transnational development projects explains how the patterns of poor rights recognition and implementation, power(lessness), vulnerability and, ultimately, conflict routinely seen in development projects will only be fully appreciated by acknowledging and remedying the pivotal role and priority enjoyed by private mechanisms, documentation and expertise. This book:

  • Introduces the phenomenon of transnational development projects as a new field for multi-disciplinary research, policy making and corporate practice
  • Provides fresh, rigorous and real-life case study and documentary illustrations into the interfaces and tensions between technical, algorithmic and hidden contractual and policy mechanisms, neoliberal values and the implementation of customary rights to land
  • Provides practical recommendations for a preventative remedial agenda that can inform those engaged in private sector development, the implementation of land rights issues, and business and human rights

Dr. Kinnari Bhatt is a postdoctoral researcher on the research project ‘integrating normative and functional approaches to the rule of law and human rights’ (INFAR). The project is a cross-disciplinary initative of  the Erasmus University School of Law in Rotterdam and the International Institute of Social Studies in the Hague (an LDRN partner institution).

To obtain a 20% discount on this book, order via Cambridge University Press using the code BHATT2020

New book and online course on mining and development by Tracy-Lynn Field, University of the Witwatersrand School of Law (Edward Elgar Publishers / edX)

State Governance of Mining, Development and Sustainability (Edward Elgar Publishers, 2019)

States in mineral-rich jurisdictions promote mining as a development industry, and at the same time attempt to protect people and the environment from the worst excesses of extractivism and neo-extractivism. Exploring how the State’s role in facilitating a developmental and sustainable mining industry has been defined, this book provides a world-first global, comparative analysis of the principal narratives framing mining, development and sustainability in developed and developing countries. The book illustrates how these themes are woven into technical governance areas of property, taxation, environmental assessment and mine closure. Ultimately, this book shows how the promotional and protective role of the State constituted by the advocacy, policies and laws of international financial institutions, industry associations, activists, and mineral-rich jurisdictions supports an unsustainable system of global mining production. 

Mining for Development: The Taxation Linkage (online course, edX.org)

Tax revenues are likely to be the core benefit of mineral extraction for host States. To promote mining for development, States must design mineral fiscal regimes that consider the interests of a wide range of stakeholders. Their choices have major implications for public finance, development and sustainability. This course will help policy makers, managers in private sector companies, and activists understand these choices and their implications.

This book and online course were authored by Prof. Tracy-Lynn Field of University of the Witwatersrand School of Law (an LDRN partner institution).

New book publication: Advocating Social Change Through International Law, Daniel Bradlow and David Hunter (eds) (Brill Publishers, 2019)

Advocating Social Change Through International Law, Daniel Bradlow and David Hunter (eds) (Brill Publishers, 2019)

This book explores the use of hard and soft international law in advocating for social change. Using case studies rooted in inter alia human rights, international crimes, environmental protection, public health, and financial regulation, the book focuses on both state and non-state actors’ strategic choices regarding the use of hard and soft international law in advocating for social change. Looking through the social change lens provides new insights into the interplay between soft and hard international law, the perceived costs and benefits associated with hard and soft international law in different contexts, and the factors affecting the effectiveness of hard and soft approaches to international law.

This book was co-edited by Daniel Bradlow of the University of Pretoria Centre for Human Rights (an LDRN partner institution), and was launched at the 4th Annual LDRN Conference at the Humboldt University Law Faculty, Berlin.

LDRN member publications – January 2020

Philipp Dann, Institutional Law and Development Governance: An Introduction, Law and Development Review, vol. 12, no. 2 (2019), 537 – 560 (open access after registration)
 
Philipp Dann and Michael Riegner, The World Bank’s Environmental and Social Safeguards and the evolution of global order, Leiden Journal of International Law, vol. 32, no. 3 (2019), 537 – 559 (open access)
 
Markus Kaltenborn, Markus Krajewski & Heike Kuhn (eds), Sustainable Development Goals and Human Rights, Springer: Cham, Switzerland, 2020 (open access)
 
Wouter Vandenhole, Gamze Erdem Türkelli and Sara Lembrechts, Children’s Rights. A Commentary on the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Protocols, Edward Elgar: Cheltenham, UK, 2019
 

Jochen von Bernstorff and Philipp Dann (eds), The Battle for International Law: South-North Perspectives on the Decolonization Era, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2019

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LDRN members are welcome to announce their latest publications via this list – please send references and links to the Editor by the final Monday of the month.

LDRN member publications – December 2019

Kennedy Kariseb and Chairman Okoloise “Reflections on the African Governance Architecture: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities” in Michael Addaney, Michael Gyan Nyarko & Elsabé Boshoff  (eds) Governance, Human Rights, and Political Transformation in Africa  (2020) Palgrave MacMillan 41-68. 
  
Jennifer Lander, Transnational Law and State Transformation: The Case of Extractive Development in MongoliaAbingdon: Routledge, 2020. (20% discount on the hardback price for orders via the Routledge website, using the code FLR40).
 
Chairman Okoloise “Balancing National Security and Human Rights in the Fight Against Boko Haram in Nigeria” in  Michael Addaney, Michael Gyan Nyarko & Elsabé Boshoff  (eds) Governance, Human Rights, and Political Transformation in Africa  (2020) Palgrave MacMillan 309-331. 

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LDRN members are welcome to announce their latest publications via this list – please send references and links to the Editor by the final Monday of the month.  (Submissions for the next list can be sent until the final Monday of January 2020).

LDRN member publications – November 2019

Giedre Jokubauskaite, The concept of affectedness in international development, World Development, Volume 126, February 2020, 104700 (free access / download until 11 December 2019)

Isabela Warioba, Child Marriage in Tanzania: A Human Rights Perspective, Journal of Law, Social Justice and Global Development, Issue 23, 2019, 1-18

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LDRN members are welcome to announce their latest publications via this list – please send references and links to the Editor by the final Monday of the month.

Völkerrechtsblog online symposium on Law & Development | Insights from the LDRN Annual Conference 2019

The Völkerrechtsblog – a blog on international public law and international legal thought founded by the Working Group of Young International Law Scholars – is running an online symposium on Law & Development with the contribution of speakers at the recent Law & Development Research Network Annual Conference at the Humboldt University Law Faculty.

Five articles have already been published, with more to follow over the coming weeks. Keep visiting the Völkerrechtsblog Law & Development symposium for further insights from LDRN conference participants!

LDRN member publications: July 2019

Klaus D. Beiter, Where Have All the Scientific and Academic Freedoms Gone? And What Is “Adequate for Science”? – The Right to Enjoy the Benefits of Scientific Progress and Its Applications, Israel Law Review, Vol. 52, No. 2, 2019, 233–291.

Deborah Casalin, Human Rights Treaty Mechanisms and Reparation for International Humanitarian Law Violations: Fragmentation, Partiality, Selective Justice?,  Human Rights & International Legal Discourse, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2019,  2 – 20.

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LDRN members are welcome to announce their latest publications via this monthly list – please send references and links to the Editor by the final Monday of the month.

LDRN member publications: May – June 2019

Karin Arts, Children’s Rights and Climate Change, in Claire Fenton-Glynn (ed.), Children’s Rights and Sustainable Development: Interpreting the UNCRC for Future Generations, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2019, 216 – 235.

Wouter Vandenhole, Towards a Fourth Moment in Law and Development?, 12/2 Law and Development Review 2019, 265-283.

Wouter Vandenhole, Children’s Rights and Sustainable Development from a ‘Law and Development’ Perspective, in Claire Fenton-Glynn (ed.), Children’s Rights and Sustainable Development. Interpreting the UNCRC for Future Generations, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2019, 12-30.

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LDRN members are welcome to announce their latest publications via this monthly list – please send references and links to the Editor by the final Monday of the month.