Elise Groulx

Door Tenant

introduction

Elise Groulx Diggs practices international human rights law and international criminal law, with wide experience advising public and private sector clients. She is also an accredited mediator since 2010 and certified in France (2016) and by IMI (The International Mediation Institute) in The Hague, since January 2017. She created two international NGOs, one which she led for 15 years. She advises corporations on human rights risks in their strategic and big footprint projects and supply chains. Elise is a recognized expert in business and human rights where she has focused amongst others in assessing the legal risks of operating in fragile states and conflict zones. She advises corporations, law firms, organisations and international NGOs in the United States, Canada, France and the United Kingdom with a focus on the UNGPs, the OECD guidelines for Multinational, the Equator principles and the SDGs.

Elise is a thought leader and a convener of the international legal profession and has been recognized and ranked internationally among the top 10 lawyers in the field of Business and Human Rights (Chambers & Partners Global Guide, London,) 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 and in February 2021 when she was ranked at the very top (Band One) and received the title “Global Market Elite Leader”

background and expertise

For the past seven years Elise was an Associate Tenant at Doughty Street Chambers in London. She is a member the Paris Bar and is Of Counsel at Alkine et Associés, a French law in Paris. She is “Of Counsel” at Fall Legal in Dakar, Senegal. And to Endo et Associés, in Montréal Québec (Canada). She is also Principal of the international consulting group, BI for Business Integrity & Partners LLC, based in Washington. D.C. (USA).

Elise offers legal advisory and training services to corporations, corporate lawyers, international organisations, and sustainability experts in conducting human rights due diligence, human rights impact assessment and social risk assessments. She is an expert at coaching business, financial institutions and other relevant actors assessing their legal exposures related to business operations and supply chains in conflict-affected areas. She has advised multinational corporations and a variety of clients on a wide range of issues including: due diligence assessments for investments in conflict-prone countries; business complicity in war crimes; corporate criminal liability; inclusive governance and stakeholders and remediation programs for victims of grave human rights violations occurring near mining and big footprint projects.

Elise is currently involved in an international multi-stakeholder’s mediation between workers and employers in South East Asia to resolve dispute around freedom of association, working conditions, unpaid wages and severance package.

Recently, Elise served as mediator in a complex dispute involving workers laid off during the COVID pandemic in a southeast Asian country, their plant management, a Chinese parent corporation, a branded multinational in the EU and an international labour union. Elise's current mediation mandate came to a successful resolution. This complex dispute tested the limits of traditional commercial and labour-management dispute resolution, raising sensitive issues of equity, due process and respect for human rights. This challenging and complex dispute tested Elise to employ methods acquired in years of practice in the field of criminal justice as well as her knowledge and experience in the field of Access to Remedy for victims of alleged human rights abuse. This of course is a key pillar of the both of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the NCP processes of the OECD Guidelines on Responsible Business Conduct.

Elise convenes the Advisory Board of the Business and Human Rights project of the American Bar Association Center for Human Rights and has spoken on these issues for the last 15 years. She organized a major conference, held in Paris in March 2013, on International Corporate Liability in Conflict Zones jointly with the leaders of the French National Bar Council (Conseil National des Barreaux/CNB), the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Quai d'Orsay) and the American Bar Association (ABA).[1]

She has a track record of convening and mobilizing the international legal profession, dating from 1996 when she first entered the field of International Criminal Law (ICL). She has been a respected voice for the defence and an advocate for the international legal profession at the International Criminal Court (ICC), leading to the creation of the International Criminal Bar (ICB) in 2003.

A precursor organization led by Elise, the International Criminal Defence Attorneys Association (ICDAA), was responsible for proposing essential provisions on the rights of the defense that were entrenched in the Rules of Procedure and Evidence of the ICC in 1999-2000. The ICDAA participated in the establishment of a legal aid system in Afghanistan from 2005 until 2011 and did planning work for a similar legal aid project in Haiti. Following the earthquake in January 2010 the ICDAA did not secure finding to go ahead with the project but Elise participated in training the judiciary in Haiti.

The ICDAA with Elise at its head and many lawyers and legal organizations led the effort to establish the International Criminal Bar (ICB) for the International Criminal Court. It was created in Montréal in June 2002 and she was elected its first executive president in Berlin (Germany), in March 2003.

She spent much of her career as a criminal defence attorney in Montréal, litigating complex court cases and engaging in plea-bargaining and negotiations. As a public defender, she represented thousands of indigent clients. She then started her own practice and handled cases dealing with complex legal policy issues, notably police brutality and a "self defence review" of the cases of women who claimed to have killed their partners in legitimate self-defence. She also sat on a Military Justice Panel advising the Judge Advocate General of Canada for three years.

She is licensed to practice law as a barrister and solicitor in Québec (Canada), Paris (France) and European legal institutions including the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. She is also a licensed legal consultant in the State of New York.

She started her career as a public defender at the legal aid system in Montreal where she practiced for almost 10 years and was the first woman elected vice-president of the Association des Avocats de la Défence de Montréal (AADM).

She was educated in Montréal and has a BA in Political Science from the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and a law degree (L.L.L.), with distinction, from the Université de Montréal. She has a certificate in criminology and comparative criminal law from the Université of Paris II (Panthéon-Assas) and an L.L.M. in comparative criminal law, human rights and criminology from the London School of Economics (LSE).

In 2009, she was selected to participate in a workshop in the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict at the Tufts University Fletcher Summer Institute in Boston, Mass.

She trained to become an accredited mediator in 2010 and was certified by the Institut Français de Certification des Médiateurs (Paris) in 2016 and became accredited as an international mediator by the International Institute of Mediation (IMI) in The Hague in 2017.

In June 2021, she was invited to take part in a one-week expert training to become certified as a peacemaker. It was offered by the Oxford Peacemaking Process and CEDR (Center for Effective Dispute Resolution). Elise was sponsored by Georgetown University Law Center.

Languages

French: Native
English: Fully bilingual spoken and written English
Spanish: Working proficiency

Current Professional Activities

Chair of the Initiative on Business and Human Rights at the American Bar Association (ABA) Center for Human Rights, Washington DC.
Affiliated to Georgetown University Law Centre in Washington, DC, where she is the Co-Director of a Programme for Lawyers in Business and Human Rights at the Centre on Ethics and the Legal Profession.
Was chair of the IBA Committee on Business and Human Rights (London) until January 2022
Founding Member of a think tank on issues of security and development Cercle K2 (2014) in Paris, France
She helped launched a new initiative in the field of Business and Human Rights, the development of an Access to Remedy Institute (ARI), to address human rights and environmental harms from business activities. This new initiative is fostered by the ABA Center for Human Rights.

Podcast

Supply Chain School with Helen Carter and Elise Groulx

Episode 17 - Part 1/4 (10 July)

Elise Groulx explains the evolution of the legal frameworks for human rights

Elise describes the evolution of human rights law from the publication of the guiding principles on business and human rights by John Ruggie in 2011. She goes on to describe the 5 rings of law in this area … hard law, reporting, norms of conduct, contracts and standards, international soft law and norms. Elise describes how soft law does transition through these rings to become hard law. Elise provides examples from France, USA, Japan, India and the UK.

Listen on YouTube and Buzzsprout

Episode 17 - Part 2/4 (11 July)

The evolution of procurement practice around human rights

Helen Carter describes her role in developing the British standard for Modern Slavery and her up coming role leading the UK delegation to develop an ISO standard. She describes the challenge for purchases to comply with the “galaxy of legislation” that is being developed around the world.

Listen on YouTube and Buzzsprout

Episode 17 - Part 3/4 (12 July)

Best practice in addressing human rights through supply chains

In this episode Elise and Helen focus on supply chains. They discuss the role of the UN guiding principles on business and human rights (UNGP’s) and changes in legislation around the world that makes organisations at the top of the supply chain as well as their subsidiaries and suppliers accountable for abuses of human rights. Organisations need to identify, map, prevent, mitigate and remediate human rights abuses. Helen describes the role of ISO standard to provide a framework for organisations to work toward this objective.

Listen on YouTube and Buzzsprout

Episode 17 - Part 4/4 (13 July)

Elise Groulx and Helen Carter discuss "Just Transition"

Elise and Helen share their thinking about just transition. They highlight the potential problems and the immense benefits just transition could bring to people and how just transition should be framed and focused. They make the link between low carbon technology, responsible consumption, human rights, environmental justice and bio diversity and the need for everyone to come together to deliver holistic solutions.

Listen on YouTube and Buzzsprout

Episode 17 - Full Episode (14 July)

Elise and Helen… The full conversation!

This episode is a recording of the entire conversation of Elise Groulx and Helen Carter as covered in previous episodes 1 – 4

Listen on YouTube and Buzzsprout

PROFILE: Elise Groulx

clerks@9brchambers.co.uk

Appointments

Chair of the Initiative on Business and Human Rights at the American Bar Association (ABA) Center for Human Rights, Washington DC.

Affiliated to Georgetown University Law Centre in Washington, DC, where she is the Co-Director of a Programme for Lawyers in Business and Human Rights at the Centre on Ethics and the Legal Profession.

Was chair of the IBA Committee on Business and Human Rights (London) until January 2022

Recognition