Canada's Enhanced CSR Strategy: Human Rights Due Diligence and Access to Justice for Victims of Extraterritorial Corporate Human Rights Abuses

International law's invisible hand and the future of corporate accountability for violations of human rights

Participatory Rights in the Ontario Mining Sector: An International Human Rights Perspective

Binding the Hand that Feeds Them: The Agreement on Agriculture, Transnational Corporations and the Right to Adequate Food in Developing Countries

Responsibility Beyond Borders: State Responsibility for Extraterritorial Violations by Corporations of International Human Rights Law

Corporate Voluntarism and Human Rights: The Adequacy and Effectiveness of Voluntary Self-Regulation Regimes

The Emergence of the Idea of the Individualized State in the International Legal System

This book explores the persistence of the governance gap with respect to the human rights-impacting conduct of transnational extractive corporations operating in zones of weak governance.

The Governance Gap: Extractive Industries, Human Rights, and the Home State Advantage

Integrating Sustainable Development into International Investment Agreements:  A Guide for Developing Country Negotiators

Prior to taking up her position at the Faculty of Law, Penelope was a Senior Lecturer in Law at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK.  She was called to the British Columbia Bar in 1996 and practiced corporate/commercial law with McCarthy Tétrault LLP.  She has also worked in the nongovernmental sector on peace and disarmament issues.

Penelope has been engaged in research on corporate human rights accountability for over a decade. In December 1999 she participated in the Canadian Assessment Mission to Sudan (the Harker Mission), appointed by Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, to investigate allegations of slavery as well as links between oil development in Sudan and violations of human rights. Her current research is focused on the human rights implications of domestic and extraterritorial corporate activity, state responsibility for corporate complicity in human rights violations, as well as the intersections between transnational corporate activity, human rights and international economic law.

She is the co-author with Audrey Macklin of The Governance Gap: Extractive Industries, Human Rights, and the Home State Advantage (Routledge, 2014) which examines the human rights implications of corporate activity in zones of weak governance and argues for home state regulation.  She is also a co-author with J. Anthony VanDuzer and Graham Mayada of Integrating Sustainable Development into International Investment Agreements:  A Guide for Developing Country Negotiators (Commonwealth Secretariat, 2013), a book that discusses ways in which international investment treaties could be reimagined to address more effectively the sustainable development concerns of party states.

Penelope teaches international human rights law, business organizations, public international law and a course on transnational corporations, human rights and international trade and investment law.

Business and Human Rights

Corporate Social Responsibility

International Human Rights Law

Transnational Corporations  Human Rights and International Economic Law

Between rock and responsibility

Canadian mining company defending itself against abuse allegations

Ex-official says forced labour built Canada mine in Eritrea test case

We need to better regulate Canadian companies abroad

The first step towards corporate accountability for actions abroad?

Defeat of responsible mining bill is missed opportunity

Courting shame

Professor, Faculty of Law

2 Penelope Simons

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