Conference: Human Rights in the Extractive Industries: Conflicts and Regulatory Responses

On July 20-22, 2016, the Centre for Human Rights Erlangen-Nürnberg at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg and the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main will host a conference on "Human Rights in the Extractive Industries: Conflicts and Regulatory Responses," in Frankfurt. The program is here. Here is the idea:

While extractive industries (mining, oil and gas) contribute significantly to the economy in many countries of the global South, their activities often have a considerable negative effect on the human rights of the local population and on domestic and international peace and stability. The conference “Human Rights in Extractive Industries: Conflicts and Regulatory Responses” provides an overview of the potentialhuman rights violations arising in the context of theextractive industries and assesses different regulatory responses ranging from host and home country measures to international law and from binding rules to voluntary guidelines. The conference is organised along three main themes: It begins with analyses of the main human rights challenges by looking at the rights of the local population and the impact of extractive industries on local and international conflicts. It then moves to a first set of regulatory responses at the home and host state level. Subsequently, international law developments and soft law instruments are discussed. The last part of the conference looks at a set of case studies which illustrate the challenges and responses discussed previously.