The NOVA BHRE Blog

The Fundão dam collapse litigation marks a turning point in transnational corporate accountability, as the English courts asserted jurisdiction and applied Brazilian environmental law to hold BHP potentially liable as a parent company. By finding that BHP exercised significant control, oversight and economic involvement in Samarco’s operations, the Court rejected the portrayal of the company as a merely passive investor and pierced the protective logic of corporate separateness by qualifying BHP as a “polluter” subject to strict liability.

The decision establishes a precedent for looking beyond formal corporate structures where serious environmental harm is foreseeable and inadequately managed, thereby lowering both jurisdictional and doctrinal barriers to cross-border litigation. More broadly, it stands as a landmark judgment that signals multinational enterprises may be held accountable in their home forums for environmental and human rights harms arising abroad, reinforcing the need to act with genuine corporate responsibility and robust due diligence in their global operations.

A adoção da Diretiva Europeia sobre Dever de Diligência em Sustentabilidade Corporativa (CSDDD) representou um passo importante na regulação da conduta empresarial em matéria de direitos humanos e meio ambiente. No entanto, menos de dois anos após a sua adoção, a diretiva foi profundamente alterada no âmbito do pacote de simplificação legislativa conhecido como Omnibus I.
Analisando a conjuntura atual e oferecendo um balanço crítico, neste blogpost Gabriel Araujo discute as principais mudanças resultantes do acordo entre o Parlamento Europeu e o Conselho: a redução significativa do escopo de aplicação da CSDDD, a supressão da obrigação de adoção de planos de transição climática e a eliminação de um regime europeu harmonizado de responsabilidade civil, bem como suas implicações para a coerência e a ambição da política europeia de sustentabilidade corporativa.

Almost every academic colleague I speak with has encountered student assignments that appear to be written largely with the help of large language model (LLM) tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and related applications. As an academic journal reviewer, I have also seen manuscript submissions containing non-existent references, errors that are difficult to explain except as model-generated fabrications. I have even heard of reviewers delegating peer review to AI systems, which has reportedly led some authors to embed hidden prompts in manuscripts (for example, using white font) instructing the system to recommend acceptance.

On 9 and 10 of September 2025, Homa -Brazilian Institute for Human Rights and Business, together with the Brazilian National Human Rights Council (CNDH), Friends of the Earth Brazil (FOEi), Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), Worker´s Union (CUT), Movement of people Affected by Dams (MAB), Justiça Global, and Instituto Lavoro, organised a regional seminar on human rights and business in Latin America with the participation of civil society organisations, trade unions, human rights defenders, academia and members of parliament from different Latin American countries such as Brasil, Uruguay, Argentina, Colombia and Mexico.