This year the researcher firstly conducted research examining the two main pillars under the UN guiding principles on business and human rights. The first pillar manifests itself as rising cases where multinational corporations are either legally sued or informally boycotted for the arguable lack of due consideration of human rights and environmental concerns. The lack of an international legal framework thus leads to great uncertainty facing multinational companies in terms of due diligence obligations.

The second aspect of this discusses the access to remedy where human rights are violated. The idea is to enable victims, who are normally from developing countries, of subsidiary companies’ tortious acts to bring litigations against the parental company at the court of the place of its registration or main center of business, which usually leads to a developed country with a reputational legal system.

Finally, the regional study focuses on the analysis of projects conducted under China’s Belt and Road Initiative for the purpose of evaluating what role this new initiative actually plays in the advertised pursuit of sustainable investment, and environmental protection, seeking mutual benefits, particularly in the Asia-pacific region.