Liliana Lizarazo Rodriguez

Vrije Universiteit Brussel | VUB · Brussels School of Governance. 3E (Environment, Economy, Energy) Research Centre

This article presents methodological challenges for legal analysis when dealing with the third pillar of the United Nations ‘Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights’ (UNGP), particularly principles 26, 27 and 31, regarding the state-based non-judicial and judicial mechanisms that provide ‘effective’ access to an ‘effective’ remedy. The arti...

This article is written around the time a Dutch court ordered the corporate group Shell to cut its carbon emissions by 2030. The aim of the article is to contribute to the conceptualisation of the phenomenon this judgement unveils in terms of greening human rights litigation supported by the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human R...

This report presents a comprehensive overview of the possibility and necessity of establishing corporate responsibility and accountability of companies active in the arms value chain. The main questions are, first, to what extent are the companies active in the arms value chains required to incorporate into their risk assessments, the adverse and...

This article addresses the protection of indigenous peoples and their natural habitats in Colombia when investment projects are planned or implemented. Special attention is paid to the mechanisms of prior informed consultation; and free, prior, and informed consent. The Colombian case is relevant because it is at the vanguard of protecting the righ...

https://www.curiaevirides.eu/post/a-beginners-guide-to-building-a-dataset-for-quantitative-analysis-of-social-legal-and-environmental

This blogpost gathers some reflections on the theme of the webinar organised by members of the End Ecocide Movement and of the ERC Research Project Curiae Virides of the Brussels School of Governance of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Full text here: https://www.curiaevirides.eu/post/the-multiple-faces-of-ecocide-as-a-new-crime-against-humanity-ref...

Dans le cadre des actions de la Belgique en matiere des UNGPs, les parties prenantes de la société civile ont été invitées à formuler des contributions dans un tableau de bord, sur la base des recommandations de la NBA. Pour analyser ces contributions, le groupe de travail CSR a fait appel à des experts de HIVA-KU Leuven et de la Brussels School of...

In het kader van de implementatie van de UNGPs, werd aan maatschappelijke stakeholders gevraagd om inputs te geven in een dashboard, dat gebaseerd is op de aanbevelingen van het NBA. Om deze inputs te analyseren doet de werkgroep MVO nu een beroep op experten van HIVA-KU Leuven en de Brussels School of Governance van de Vrije Universiteit Brussel (...

This blog post summarises the contributions presented at the webinar Water Rights and Water Fights: Transboundary Water Governance in Africa. It provides a multidisciplinary view on governance challenges and perspectives related to two mega hydraulic projects that could have adverse impacts on water rights. It was organised by the ERC Curiae Viride...

This chapter focuses on whether a regulatory framework of patent protection is a crucial condition to generate patents in a developing country context, and to stimulate innovation and technology transfer. This chapter compares paths and differences in terms of patent protection and innovation among member states of ASEAN, on the one hand, and the A...

This post explores how regional treaties that regulate public participation in environmental matters can be enforced (or not) by regional courts. By considering the experience of the UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters, better known as the Aarhus Conventio...

This blog draws from the recent webinar, Protecting the Amazon Region: Governance Gaps, organised by the ERC Curiae Virides Project of the Brussels School of Governance, together with the Institute of Population Health Sciences (IPHS) of Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and UNU-CRIS. It sought to provide a multidisciplinary view on some of th...

This report covers the findings and recommendations of the Belgian National Baseline Assessment (NBA) on Business and Human Rights. The NBA charts the progress made by Belgian authorities and companies since the launch of Belgium’s first National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights, in June 2017. The research was commissioned by the Belgian Fe...

Debt sovereignty deals with several aspects that mainly matter when a debt crisis occurs. This chapter addresses the fragmentation of the global financial architecture, the political economy of IMF programmes, the main debt restructuring approaches, the role of courts in protecting human rights during structural adjustment processes, and the challe...

Law and Development (L & D) as a field of study aims at answering questions on the interactions between law and development (law and/as/in/for development). The philosophical/ideological understanding of L & D influences the conceptual approach and the methodological perspective adopted. This chapter explains how mainstream L & D, post-modern appro...

Human rights compliance assessment seeks to analyze whether non-state actors’ activities respect and protect international human rights norms and standards. When the state acts as a private agent, this assessment can also apply. This assessment is performed to identify actual or potential risks to the human rights of the citizens that interact with...

This toolbox aims to provide an accessible and user-friendly set of tools to guide organisations and their stakeholders in their human rights duties in the context of their activities. Website: https://business-humanrights.be/

https://www.developpementdurable.be/sites/default/files/content/ungp_access_to_remedy_mapping_and_barriers_201707_university_of_antwerpen.pdf

This paper contributes to the discussion on the potential of today’s regional economic integration projects in South America. The starting point is a global mapping exercise of constitutional references to regionalism, which allows locating and typifying the South American constitutional contexts in comparison to global patterns. This global analys...

This paper presents an overview of the emergence and evolution of the concept and field of Law and Development. The concept of Law and Development covers a variety of aspects. These aspects acquire different meanings depending on different criteria and approaches. It depends on the geographical context, depends on the scope and meaning that is give...

The regional policy level is often seen as a (potential) source of progressive policy-making in health (and in social policy more widely), complementing or substituting national policy levels, which are perceived as underperforming. While it can certainly be argued that there are important opportunities to adopt regional approaches to tackle border...

Colombia’s Constitution of 1991 is an ambitious text which tries to strike a balance between laying a strong foundation for economic modernization and liberalization, on the one hand, and the creation of a Social State of Law and the protection of an impressive list of constitutional rights, on the other. Because of the doctrine that has been devel...

The EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (FTA) is expected to be signed this year. Liliana Lizarazo Rodriguez, a free trade agreement specialist at Belgian law firm A-Law International and the firm’s managing partner Patricia Leers look at the impact of the agreement on Vietnam’s economy and business climate. http://www.vir.com.vn/europe-vietnam-relati...

This Article considers a large global sample of constitutional texts (i.e. 171 constitutions from 153 countries) and assesses to what extent and how they refer to the increasingly important phenomenon of international regionalism (or regional integration) and how they deal with potential sources of tensions and contradictions between the national l...

Colombia has recently negotiated trade agreements with the EU, the US and some other countries. This article explores the compatibility of these agreements with constitutional rights in Colombia, by looking at recent case-law of Colombian courts. This Andean country is, in our view, a particularly interesting case because of the coincidence of a ne...

This article seeks to describe the strategic use of a rights discourse by domestic and international actors involved in the negotiation and ratification processes of free trade agreements between Colombia, the United States, and the European Union. We suggest that some of the differences between both FTAs and the processes leading up to their appro...

Over the past decades, the process of untrammelled trade liberalization has engulfed many parts of the world. Albeit the attenuated success obtained on trade facilitation on global trade in Bali 2013, the global proclivity toward bilateral trade deals remains patent. The acceleration of this trend can be explained by the inability of political mast...

This article seeks to describe the strategic use of a rights discourse by domestic and international actors involved in the negotiation and ratification processes of free trade agreements between Colombia, the United States, and the European Union. We suggest that some of the differences between both FTAs and the processes leading up to their appro...

This paper considers a large global sample of constitutional texts (i.e. 171 constitutions from 153 countries) and assesses to what extent and how they refer to the increasingly important phenomenon of international regionalism (or regional integration) and how they deal with potential sources of tensions and contradictions between the national leg...

Colombia is mentioned, together with the US, Uruguay, Argentina and Mexico, as one of the first countries worldwide to adopt the judicial review as a means for adjudicating on the constitutionality of legislation. In recent years, and particularly since the enactment of the Political Constitution of 1991, the Colombian Constitutional Court is also...

In this paper we present the antecedents of the agreement subscribed between Colombia and the IMF and its effects, specially, the structural reforms. We try to explain which constitutional and legal reforms were direct results of the engagements contained in the Agreement, and which were made as a complement or as a mechanism to reach the macroecon...

En este documento se presentan los antecedentes de la Firma del Acuerdo extendido celebrado entre Colombia y el Fondo Monetario Internacional, así como la explicación de los alcances del mismo y las implicaciones que a nivel de reformas institucionales ha tenido dicho acuerdo. Adicionalmente se explican cuáles reformas constitucionales y legales ob...

En este artículo se pretende explorar este concepto, a través de su supuesto origen, su carácter jurídico, su validez económica y su utilidad política, para aclararlo. Es importante resaltar que aunque existe subsidiariedad en varios niveles, aquí se estudiará principalmente al nivel de la relación entre el Estado y el organismo supranacional, con...

La mayoría de los países que se encuentran en proceso de industrialización, han sido afectados por una alta inflación después de haber tenido algunos años de crecimiento acelerado. Este fenómeno se ha presentado frecuentemente en países de América Latina como México, Brasil y Argentina, causando disminuciones periódicas en la velocidad del proceso...