Report of the ICJ expert legal panel on corporate complicity in international crimes

22/07/2009

This ICJ Expert Panel was established in 2006 to develop the legal and public policy meaning of corporate complicity in the worst violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.

The report is the first of its kind. It brings together law, policy and practice and clarifies when companies can be held legally liable for complicity in gross human rights violations.

volume 1: Facing the Facts and Charting a Legal Path.

In this Volume, the Panel brings together in one synthesis its understanding of criminal law and civil law, based on the studies in Volumes 2 and 3. In policy language the Panel describes the kind of conduct that a company should avoid if it is to ensure that it does not become complicit in gross human rights abuses, and as a result find itself in a zone of legal risk.

volume 2: Criminal Law and International Crimes.

In this Volume, the Panel asks in what circumstances international criminal law could hold companies and/or their officials criminally responsible when they are involved with others in gross human rights abuses that amount to crimes under international law. This volume also looks briefly at the important role that criminal law plays in ensuring the accountability, and preventing the impunity, of actors involved in such abuses.

volume 3: Civil Remedies.

Through a comparative analysis of the law of tort in common law countries and the law of non-contractual obligations in civil law jurisdictions, the Panel explores the law of domestic civil liability and the ways in which, across jurisdictions, civil liability may arise for companies and/or their officials when they are complicit in gross human rights abuses.

Corporate-complicity-legal-accountability-vol1-publication-2009-eng (full text of vol. 1 in English, PDF)

Corporate-complicity-legal-accountability-vol2-publication-2009-eng (full text of vol. 2 in English, PDF)

Corporate-complicity-legal-accountability-vol3-publication-2009-eng (full text of vol. 3 in English, PDF)

Corporate-complicity-legal-accountability-vol1-publication-2009-fra (full text of vol. 1 in French, PDF)

Corporate-complicity-legal-accountability-vol2-publication-2009-fra (full text of vol. 2 in French, PDF)

Corporate-complicity-legal-accountability-vol3-publication-2009-fra (full text of vol. 3 in French, PDF)

Corporate-complicity-legal-accountability-vol1-publication-2009-spa (full text of vol. 1 in Spanish, PDF)

Corporate-complicity-legal-accountability-vol2-publication-2009-spa (full text of vol. 2 in Spanish, PDF)

Corporate-complicity-legal-accountability-vol3-publication-2009-spa (full text of vol. 3 in Spanish, PDF)