Seminar in the form of a colloquium.
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Symposium
Taking responsibility seriously
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The principle of responsibility will necessarily occupy a central place in the recomposition of the international legal order in the 21st century. Not only because the obligation to answer for one's actions is an inherent value of any organized community, but also because this obligation is all the greater the more interdependent the members of this community are. These interdependencies are increasingly strong and visible on a global scale, whether between individuals, between countries, or between humanity and the biosphere. Whether we're talking about climate change, work and health, international trade, financial markets or the activities of transnational corporations, the change in scale of the impact of human activities on the planet and on societies leads to a change in the scale and nature of responsibility.
The current inability of the international community to contain climate change, despite the threats it poses to entire countries, is a perfect illustration of the gap that has opened up between the scale of global interdependence and the state of international law. The principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities" set out at the conclusion of the 1992 Earth Summit is undoubtedly necessary in view of the diversity of national contexts, but in practice it has led to widespread irresponsibility. States have pledged to adopt a new roadmap, in the face of climate change, at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) to be held in Paris at the end of 2015 at the invitation of the French government. This could be an opportunity to bring about a significant advance in international liability law.
The same applies to healthcare, where there are obvious shortcomings, with the market reserving access to over 90% of medicines for just one-quarter of the population. Hence the debate, from the WTO to the WHO, on patents and compulsory licenses. This debate is continuing in the context of the post-2015 Development Agenda, with a consultation on health. While the WHO and other participants in this debate limit themselves to supporting universal health coverage, at the risk of favoring market interests, Brazil proposes the more ambitious formula of equitable and comprehensive coverage that characterizes its "Single Health System" (SUS).
At the same time, the implosion of the financial markets in 2008, far from leading to the adoption of common rules that would make market operators accountable for the risks they take, has resulted in a transfer of these risks to governments and populations. This financial crisis has also shown the damaging effects of financial market deregulation and the abandonment, by the new international accounting standards adopted at the end of the 20th century, of the principle of prudence in favor of that offair value.
Finally, the free movement of capital and goods has enabled multinational companies to free themselves from the social and environmental responsibilities that national laws imposed on them, without being subject to international rules with the same purpose. National laws have thus been engaged in a race to the "lowest social and environmental bidder", one of the most recent and tragic examples of which is the Rana Plaza industrial accident in Bangladesh on April 24, 2013, which claimed the lives of 1133 female textile workers.
Corporate social and environmental responsibility" is intended to compensate for the lack of social and environmental policing of international competition. Large corporations are thus invited to organize themselves into mini-states, driven by "concerns" other than the enrichment of their shareholders. The value of such initiatives should not be underestimated. But in the absence of a clearly identifiable leader, an organization capable of demanding accountability and a Third Party to answer to, this responsibility is clearly not a responsibility. It is a symptom of an institutional crisis, rather than a remedy for a state of law that increasingly allows those with the power to decide not to have to answer for the decisions they make.
To transpose an expression borrowed from the title of a famous book by Ronald Dworkin(Taking Rights Seriously - 1977), it therefore seems urgent today to "take responsibility seriously". From today's point of view, such an objective implies not only a careful analysis of developments in the implementation of responsibility in positive law, but also a reflection on how this law could be adapted to prevent irresponsible decisions becoming widespread in environmental, social, health and financial matters.
This was the purpose of the Colloquium organized in Paris on June 11 and 12, 2015 as part of the Collège de France's "État social et mondialisation: analyse des solidarités" chair, with the support of the Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation for the Progress of Humankind. The symposium was preceded on June 8 and 9 by a doctoral meeting with young researchers, organized in Nantes in partnership with the Institut d'études avancées, and on June 10 in Paris by a meeting of the ID networks, led by Professor Mireille Delmas-Marty.
The conference was awarded the "COP21-CMP11 / Paris 2015" label by the labeling committee of the French Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy, as part of the preparations for the next World Climate Conference. The project took place in four stages. The first was aimed at understanding how the principle of responsibility is rooted in history, and taking the linguistic and cultural measure of the multiple meanings it has come to encompass. The second session dealt with the implementation of responsibility in the three areas identified by Karl Polanyi as "fictitious commodities": nature, people and money. The third session dealt with the legal difficulties raised by the implementation of responsibility in these different fields: the identification of those responsible, the triggering of responsibility and, finally, the third party competent to judge responsibility. Finally, the fourth session outlined future prospects and formulated recommendations that will be forwarded to the leaders meeting at the 21st Climate Conference. The proceedings will be published in book form by Presses Universitaires de France in autumn 2015.