[Conference] Corporate crimes and international criminal law - Moving beyond the Nuremberg Paradigm

'Corporate crimes and international criminal law - Moving beyond the Nuremberg Paradigm' is a conference jointly organised by the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights  (Berlin), the T.M.C. Asser Institute (The Hague) and Amnesty International’s Corporate Crimes Project. The event takes place in person in The Hague and a livestream will also be available. The programme for this event is out now. Registration is required here.

Background
Since the Nuremberg trials, avenues to hold businesses legally accountable for their involvement in international crimes have remained limited. By putting business actors on the stand, the trials of industrialists were certainly ground-breaking. Nevertheless, they left the question of corporations’ criminal liability unanswered. Over the last 75 years enterprises have not stopped to do business in conflict zones, closing deals with autocratic rulers involved in systematic violations of human rights. By doing so, they are at times crossing the blurred line between legitimate business activity and criminal complicity. Recently, legal action by civil society organisations (‘CSOs’) and survivors has led to a rise in national prosecutions against corporations and their executives for their involvement in international crimes, and a renewed call for the International Criminal Court (‘ICC’) to investigate corporate misconduct. In this context, we believe that it is timely to revisit the question of corporate accountability for international crimes in The Hague, the home of international criminal justice.

Please see the programme for more details.

The conference will aim to:

• Critically reflect on the evolution of individual and corporate criminal accountability for international crimes since Nuremberg.  
• Highlight recent developments in the field of criminal liability of corporations and corporate officers for international crimes: What are the similarities between the latest cases? What are the challenges they face? How do prosecutors, courts and victims representatives deal with them?
• Discuss the role of the ICC and national jurisdictions in moving forward the agenda of corporate accountability for international crimes.

Update: Registration is only available for the live-stream of the conference, as the venue has reached full capacity.

Watch the recording of the conference stream of 18th May: