Duty of Vigilance: corporate legal responsibility and impacts on agriculture in the Global South

The French Law on the Duty of Vigilance by Parent Companies and Their Contracting Enterprises (loi française relative au devoir de vigilance des sociétés mères et entreprises donneuses d’ordre) was adopted in March 2017 after a lengthy parliamentary procedure. This law, applied since 2018, makes it a legal obligation for companies to take into account the risks that they impose, throughout their value chain, on human rights and the environment. Meanwhile, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has, since 2014, been carrying out a negotiation process to elaborate an international legally binding treaty on the issue of human rights and transnational companies and other business enterprises.

In this issue of “Notes,” Coordination SUD examines the impacts that the Duty of Vigilance law and the future UN treaty could have on the agribusiness sector and on food sovereignty in the countries of the Global South.

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