HRLC Contribution to New EU Report: Positive and Negative Human Rights Impacts of Non-State Actors

The Human Rights Law Centre is pleased to announce the publication of its first FRAME  report on Positive and Negative Human Rights Impacts of Non-State Actors.

The report is the result of a collaborative effort between the Nottingham FRAME team - Professor Jeff Kenner (project leader), Professor Mary Footer, Professor Aoife Nolan  and Petr Pribyla (former FRAME research associate). The report also features contributions from FRAME partners at the Institute for International Law and International Relations  at the University of Graz and the Institute for Human Rights, at Åbo Akademi University.

The report on the positive and negative human rights impacts of non-state actors (NSAs), maps the impacts of four vertical groupings of NSAs: 1) the role of transnational corporations (TNCs) in creating opportunities for advancing individual human rights, but also their corporate social responsibility for violations; 2) the contribution of civil society, including NGOs, in protecting and promoting human rights; 3) the influence of dynamic international financial institutions; and 4) the activities of human rights defenders in identifying human rights abuses and building trust. Human rights impacts of each grouping are analysed horizontally by reference to, inter alia, the rights of the person, labour rights, the rights of children, gender equality, non-discrimination, indigenous peoples’ rights, and the rights of peoples to their culture, religion/belief and language.

In recent decades the growing influence of NSAs on human rights, and the need for international organisations to engage with them, has been widely recognised, but defining NSAs has presented a difficult challenge. Following an introduction setting out the aims and methodology of the report, the first general part, Chapters II-V, reflects on the challenge of defining NSAs and considers to what extent the international human rights regime encompasses the broad categorisation of NSAs in this report. It also discusses the EU’s approach to engagement with NSAs, the cross-cutting impacts of the media, and the measurement of NSA impacts on human rights. Chapters VI-IX analyse the human rights impacts of each of the vertical groupings of NSAs by reference to the horizontal areas referred to above.

The conclusion highlights several significant points that assist our understanding of the human rights impacts of these different types of NSAs. Overall, the report provides a broad foundation for the next stages of research in Work Package 7 ‘Engagement with Private Actors, TNCs and Civil Society’, which will involve a critical assessment of the EU’s engagement with NSAs and an exploration of the need for deeper institutionalised engagement in meeting the challenges of protecting and promoting human rights in EU internal and external policies.