Annual Meeting of the Network on Business and Conflict in Geneva

The annual meeting of the International Research Network on Business, Conflict and Human Rights (BCHR Network) will be held in Geneva on Thursday 17 November. This network, led by ICIP and formally established a year ago, brings together members from universities, NGOs and relevant research centers in the field of armed conflict and peacebuilding from around the world. Participants include, for example, the universities of Georgetown, Quebec, Sorbonne, Leiden, Greenwich, Ottawa and Australia; and centers and foundations such as SIPRI, Fafo, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Global Witness, PeaceNexus and DCAF.
The creation of the network is part of ICIP’s action program “Armed conflicts: law and justice”, coordinated by the Professor of Public International Law Antoni Pigrau. The main objective of this network is to investigate the causes, dynamics and consequences of the activities of companies in situations of armed conflict, the impact of this participation on human rights, and the legal liabilities that may arise thereof.
World-renowned speakers, such as Surya Deva, member of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights, and Sarah Joseph, director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law in Australia, will be participating in this second annual meeting, along with about forty registered attendees. Case studies of Palestine, Iraq and Colombia will be presented and, as a new feature, the negative externalities of companies’ impact on the environment will be addressed. The meeting, organized by ICIP in collaboration with DCAFG, will be held in Geneva to coincide with the United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights, which will take place that same week and in which an ICIP delegation will also be participating.
The initiative to create a research network of this nature arose in the autumn of 2011, when ICIP organized the first international seminar on business and armed conflict in Barcelona, with the intention of creating a common agenda in this subject. The seminar continued to take place, with subsequent editions held in Barcelona, in 2013; in London, in 2014; and in Geneva, in 2015.