The New Horizons of Business and Human Rights in International Arbitration : An Analysis of the Hague Rules on Business and Human Rights Arbitration

Abstract: Arbitration has previously been a dispute resolution method for commercial and investment disputes mostly concerning businesses and states. The recently launched Hague Rules on Business and Human Rights Arbitration (The Hague Rules) are a universal set of rules for business-related human rights disputes in international arbitration, which offer an additional legal remedy for victims of human rights abuse linked to business activities. This thesis discusses if the legal remedies have been improved and reflects on previous legal remedies in order to analyse a potential improvement provided by the Hague Rules. The history of business-related human rights disputes has been strongly affected by the concept of corporate social responsibility which have contributed to a development of several soft law regulations. At the same time, businesses, states and arbitral tribunals have contributed to gradually include human rights aspects in arbitration. Despite this, the development before the Hague Rules was fragmentary and victims of the business-related human rights abuse were not provided a stable access to legal remedy. Corrupted and impartial domestic courts could in turn lead to the result of victims being completely excluded from access to justice. Through the Hague Rules, victims are provided with an opportunity to raise claims in arbitration, a development that have included human rights aspects in arbitration such as public interest, imbalance of power, expert arbitrators and witness protection. Even if the Hague Rules offer an effective legal remedy for the victims of business-related human rights abuse in many regards, imbalance of power between a well-funded corporation and the victims cannot be solved solely by a soft law instrument. Furthermore, domestic laws and domestic courts might raise issues for the Hague Rules which could also potentially decrease important features of the national adjudication process. Even if the Hague Rules could be improved further, they are still an improvement of legal remedies for victims of human rights abuse linked to business activities and have increased the access to justice.