Business and Human Rights: Lessons from the Bodo Community v Shell

The OxHRH with the support of the Bertha Foundation, is pleased to continue its innovative webinar series with an exciting webinar from leading barrister, Dan Leader (Leigh Deigh) on the complex relationship between business and human rights.

Is business a threat to human rights? Or an enabler of human rights? Some see business in our world today as a threat — institutions that undermine workers’ rights and interfere with governments. Others see business as an enabler of human rights — job creators, innovators and supporters of social mobility. So, cutting through these differences, what are the real human rights issues that relate to business? Are human rights a business benefit or burden?

Dan Leader is a barrister and Partner at Leigh Day with over 15 years litigation experience. Leigh Day’s international department specialises in ground-breaking international human rights and environmental litigation with a particular focus on group actions by claimants from the developing world. Over the past decade Leigh Day has successfully brought group claims on behalf of individuals and communities around the world (including from Nigeria, Kenya, Ivory Coast, South Africa, Columbia and Peru) against a range of multinational corporations such as Shell, BP, Anglo-American, Barrick Gold and Trafigura.

Dan Leader will explain the nature of Leigh Day’s international work, with a particular focus on the recently concluded Bodo Community v Shell litigation, in which Leigh Day secured compensation for 15,000 Nigerian fishermen whose livelihoods had been destroyed by repeated oil spills. This seminar will cover core features of these claims, including parent company liability, jurisdictional challenges and applicable law. He will situate Leigh Day’s work within the broader business and human rights debate and, in particular, the current focus on access to remedy.

The webinar is unique in that it will allow academics, students, policy-makers from all over the world to participate in the OxHRH seminars. Participants will be able to listen and interact with Dan Leader. This will be an interactive webinar where participants will be asked throughout the seminar to provide their opinion on key aspects of current development in business and human rights which will then be included in the seminar. Following the seminar, there will be a questions and answer session.

Participants can submit their questions via the Oxford Human Rights Hub twitter account @OxHRH or they can email questions to [email protected].

To participate in the live webinar, visit the events tab on our wesbite from 2pm (UK time) on 2 June 2017.

For those in Oxford, please do participate as a live audience member! If you are able to participate, we kindly ask that you arrive by 1:45pm at Harold Lee Boardroom, Pembroke College.