Current Projects
Local Engagement, Action and Dialogue (LEAD) - Through strategic advice, research, facilitation and workshops, Just Ground is supporting EarthRights International in documenting and providing training on strategies and participatory research tools to support community-led responses to human rights abuses in the Mekong region.
Pooled Funding for Community Legal and Technical Support - Just Ground collaborated with Rights CoLab and Namati to facilitate workshops with CSOs and private sector actors and draft a brief setting out the core principles for the creation of a pooled funding facility for legal and technical support for communities affected by land-based investment projects. Just Ground now serves as a technical advisor as the initiative moves forward to identifying pathways to implementation.
Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) Toolkit - Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) recognizes that workers have the knowledge and expertise to develop their own solutions to systematically eradicate exploitation on the job. Just Ground and the WSR Network are collaborating on a WSR Toolkit to support organizations seeking to implement WSR, based on the experiences and expertise of the worker organizations and their allies.
Business and Human Rights Training for Human Rights Defenders in Exile - In collaboration with Araminta and Rights CoLab, designed and delivered a three-day intensive business and human rights training program in Zakopane, Poland for 30 Russian human rights activists in exile. The project is now in a mentorship phase, providing guidance to a cohort of training participants engaged in project development, and a facilitating a workshop for them in early 2026 to share learnings.
Past Projects
Access to Remedy in the Mekong Region: Challenges, Strategies and Recommendations for Change - In collaboration with EarthRights International, co-facilitated a workshop that gathered 30 human rights defenders, community activists, and lawyers to discuss their challenges, share strategies, and make recommendations for improving access to remedy for human rights abuses linked to corporate activity in the Mekong Region.
Global Advocacy Team Support - International Accountability Project’s Global Advocacy Team (GAT) initiative brings together community activists and collectives from around the world and supports them in developing their own community-led development plans using community-led research and data. Just Ground supported this initiative by reviewing team members’ written reports and facilitating a workshop on collaborative data analysis.
Exploring Challenges to Company Adoption of Community-Designed Grievance Mechanisms - Facilitated a workshop sponsored by the ABA International Human Rights Committee, the ABA Corporate Social Responsibility Committee and the ABA Center for Human Rights to explore the issues involved in collaborative or community-led design of operation-level grievance mechanisms (OGMs) as tools for remediation when a company has caused or contributed to human rights harms.
Milk With Dignity - Designed and lead a program evaluation on behalf of the Fair Food Standards Council, employing the Collaborative Outcomes Reporting framework and quantitative and qualitative methods.
Presentations
The Practice of International Lawyering with a Rights-based Perspective: Illuminating the Roles of Human Rights Defenders and Rights-Holders, Celebration of the 75th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), ABA International Law Section and the Paris Bar, December 6-8, 2023.
The Human Rights Due Diligence Process - Practical Guidance for Lawyers, Business and Human Rights Forum for Legal Practitioners – 3rd Edition, International Association of Lawyers, July 10-12, 2023
Stakeholder Engagement in Human Rights Due Diligence, The European Turn to Sustainability Due Diligence: From Concept to Obligation, Asser Institute Spring Academy, April 3-5, 2023
Publications
Just Ground & EarthRights International, Contribution to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers consultation on its 2023 thematic report on Legal Empowerment, May 5, 2023.
Just Ground & EarthRights International, Contribution to the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights consultation on its report Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) and Human Rights, March 3, 2023.
Shauna Curphey, Business and Human Rights Developments: The U.N. Accountability and Remedy Project Update, Vol. 57 ABA International Law Section Year in Review, 406-409 (2023).
Antonella Angelini & Shauna Curphey, Centering Worker Rights: Insights from the Fair Food Program, Business and Human Rights Resource Center, November 29, 2022.
Antonella Angelini & Shauna Curphey, The Overlooked Advantages of the Independent Monitoring and Complaint Investigation System in the Worker-driven Social Responsibility Model in US Agriculture, Business and Human Rights Journal First View, October 2022.
Katherine McDonnell & Shauna Curphey, Contribution to the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights consultation its report on Corporate Influence in the Political and Regulatory Sphere, May 29, 2022.
Shauna Curphey & Jared Cole, Stakeholder Engagement in Human Rights Due Diligence, January 2022 (advance copy of chapter in A Guide to Human Rights Due Diligence for Lawyers, American Bar Association Publishing.
Katherine McDonnell, Morvarid Bagheri & Shauna Curphey, Addressing Corporate Activity That Negatively Impacts Natural Resources: Community-Led Engagement as a Path to Rights-Compatible Remedies, ABA International Law News, Fall 2021.
Institute for Multi-Stakeholder Initiative Integrity (MSI Integrity), Not Fit for Purpose: The Grand Experiment of Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives in Corporate Accountability, Human Rights, and Global Governance, July 2020 (Shauna Curphey, contributing researcher).
EarthRights International, The Burma-China Pipelines: Human Rights Violations, Applicable Law, and Revenue Secrecy, March 2011 (Shauna Curphey, co-authored with EarthRights staff).
EarthRights International, Broken Ethics: The Norwegian Government’s Investments in Oil and Gas Companies Operating in Burma (Myanmar), December 2010 (Shauna Curphey, co-authored with EarthRights staff).
International Women’s Initiative, Contribution to the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights report on Applying a Gender Lens to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, October 2018 (Shauna Curphey, co-authored with IWI staff).