Door Tenant

Elise Groulx Diggs practices international human rights law and international criminal law, with wide experience in litigation. She is also an accredited mediator in France and with IMI (The International Mediation Institute) in The Hague.

Elise is a true entrepreneur having created two international NGOs that she led while continuing to practice. 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 on human rights risks in their strategic and big footprint projects and global supply chains. She also works with law firms, consulting groups, trade unions 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.

Background

She is licensed to practice law as a barrister and solicitor in Québec (Canada), a lawyer in Paris (France). She is also a licensed legal consultant in the State of New York.

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.

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.

Areas of Expertise

She is one of a small group of lawyers who have specialized, for over a decade, in the fast-developing practice area of business and human rights. Elise focuses on international human rights, labour rights and getting involved in projects about environmental justice. Increasingly, we see how human rights and environmental sustainability

In her work both as a lawyer and a mediator, Elise favours an approach that promotes stakeholder engagement, building dialogue and consensus to avoid and prevent conflict with focus on mitigation and reparation.

My practice as an international mediator has expanded to include complex multi-stakeholder mediation in the field of international labour rights where my understanding of the UNGPs and the OECD guidelines as interpretative tools have been keys to my successful intervention in this environment. In 2021-2022 I conducted a long mediation (6 months) involving nearly 800 textile workers in Myanmar, Chinese employers, European brands, and International Union representatives.

Convenor, Advisory Board of the Business and Human Rights Project, American Bar Association (ABA) Washington DC

Chair of the IBA Committee on Business and Human Rights (London)

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.

French; Spanish