Penelope Simons and Audrey Macklin, The Governance Gap: Extractive Industries, Human Rights and the Home State Advantage (London: Routledge, 2014) pp xxxvii+422.

Abstract

With natural gas exploration on the increase in a number of Sub-Saharan African countries, this book comes at the ideal time, as it posits a solution for extraction-related human rights impunity by transnational corporations (TNCs). Penelope Simons and Audrey Macklin's The Governance Gap: Extractive Industries, Human Rights, and the Home State Advantage attempts to do three things: (i) highlight the potential human rights impact of Global North companies' extraction in the Global South; (ii) note the national, regional, and international instruments and mechanisms designed to ensure human rights compliance by corporate entities, and their failures; and (iii) suggest the regulation of companies by countries in the Global North in which they are domiciled (i.e. home states). Drawing on their experience as members of the Harker Mission, the authors bring to light the devastating effects of Canadian extraction company-Talisman Energy Inc.'s-activities in Sudan on the Sudanese people. The Harker Mission was established by a Canadian minister for fact-finding in Sudan, and to inform the Canadian government on Talisman's activities in that country. The Harker Report, produced by the Harker Mission, called on Talisman to acknowledge the 'destructive impact of oil extraction'. 1 In this book, Simons and Macklin take the reader on an enlightening and harrowing storytelling journey into the nature of human rights violations using Talisman as an example. They set out efforts made by civil society and governments to bring Talisman's complicity in the violations in Sudan to an end. In Chapter 2, the authors note that the end to Talisman's operations in Sudan, and therefore its complicity in human rights violations, came not from civil society or the Canadian government but rather from the US Congress' move to prevent NYSE trading in Sudanese gas and oil. Simons and Macklin find this to be an indicator of effective corporate regulation by home states in the Global North. The authors then speak to the governance gap that exists despite the development of numerous transnational initiatives. Simons and Macklin elaborate on the governance gap which allows for the continued impunity of TNCs involved in, or benefitting from, human rights violations in Chapter 3 and note what business and human rights practitioners from the Global South bemoanthe voluntary nature of UN and non-UN measures. Among the instruments discussed are the UN Global Compact, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the Equator Principles, and the OECD Guidelines of Multilateral Enterprises. The authors,