"Speech by Richard Howitt MEP to the conference on Access to Justice - Ensuring remedy for corporate human rights abuses", 12 Nov 2014

Next month, December, it will be 30 years since the Bhopal gas tragedy occurred...Few people doubt that criminal levels of negligence were involved...but no prosecution has ever been possible...Today is the latest in a series of conferences exploring how victims in such cases can get better access to justice...The imperative to do so and for today’s conference comes...from the agreement in the UN of Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in 2011...The Principles had a third pillar - Access to Remedy. The obligations are very clear...The Guiding Principles were universally endorsed...but the third pillar has arguably been the one where there has been least attention and least progress...This conference...must now ask how we can do more?...We have to do better than relying on loopholes and on grey areas of ambiguity and interpretation within existing legal frameworks. We need to clarify, strengthen and improve those frameworks...I believe National Action Plans to implement the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights are a good vehicle. But the five produced so far have been very weak on access to justice...I believe an approach which gives priority to advancing judicial remedy in instances of gross violation is necessary, if we are able to make progress.