A new legal brief produced jointly by the European Legal Support Center and Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights has found that it is legal for HS2 Ltd. – the company building the UK’s new high speed railway HS2 – to exclude from its procurement process companies which are complicit in ongoing breaches of international law, such as Spanish construction company Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles (CAF)...

According to the report, the exclusion of CAF, and any company involved in ongoing breaches of international law, would be consistent with international legal obligations requiring all public authorities – including contracting authorities as HS2 Ltd. – to respect, protect and fulfill human rights and humanitarian standards, including by avoiding economic relations with companies that directly maintain and facilitate human rights and humanitarian violations...