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The International Commission of Jurists, a non-governmental organisation dedicated to the legal promotion and protection of human rights and the rule of law, publish their findings on a 2 year study on Corporate Complicity and Legal Accountability for gross human rights abuses this week.

The study looks at corporate ‘complicity’ in the actions of a state or other actor against the citizens of a country, and the idea that as social actors, companies and corporations should be working to prevent such actions; the very idea that underpins the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility. But the concept has thus far largely been a theoretical one.

However, there have been cases of corporations being held to account; the ICJ report cites the examples of senior company officials being convicted of war crimes for supplying poisonous gas to the Nazis and enslaving workers in their factories, and the increasing use of the Alien Tort Claims Act to bring cases against American corporations acting abroad.

But the ICJ have considered the concept of complicity in a global context, asking when and how companies could be considered to be complicit in the human rights abuses that are occurring in the world today. Their answers to these questions may surprise some, although they are based on fundamental concepts of law and morality.

The ICJ states that where a company’s conduct enables, exacerbates or facilitates gross human rights abuses, where a company knows or can foresee that this is the case, and where there is proximity to the perpetrator, the company could be held legally liable, both in civil and criminal law, nationally and internationally, for those human rights abuses.

In terms of labour standards and the supply chain, the IJC states that where there is proximity to the supplier or other actor who is perpetrating the human rights abuses and where it is foreseeable that the policies or actions of the corporation could exacerbate, enable or facilitate the abuses; the corporation could be liable.

Actions or policies could include pricing, lead times, paying specific types of taxes, or not acting on previous allegations or findings regarding a particular supplier. The proximity of the supplier to the buying company is important, but it is perfectly possible for a company to be held liable if they are aware of issues in a particular region and do nothing to alleviate them.

The ICJ limits its discussion to gross human rights abuses such as torture, slavery and child labour; but the theory is applicable to other abuses such as low wages, high hours and sub-standard health and safety, all of which are included in international human rights frameworks. The ICJ provides guidelines for corporations on how to change their behaviour to avoid complicity, and the current methodology in the CSR field also provides a good framework.

Although the impact of this report will not be clear until cases are brought and examples begin to provide the structure through which corporations are held to account in particular countries or internationally, Impactt believes that the report provides further pressure on companies to address the way they trade.