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► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, "Considérer la géographie pour réussir le Devoir de Vigilance" ("Taking Geography into account for a successful Vigilance Duty"), concluding speech in Devoir de vigilance, quelles perspectives africaines ? Regards croisés en droit international, droit comparé et droit OHADA (Vigilance Duty : what African perspectives? Cross-analysis of International Law, Comparative Law and OHADA Law), Institut de Recherche en Droit des Affaires et du Patrimoine (IRDAP), Bordeaux, 15 November 2024.

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🧮see the full programme of this manifestation (in French)

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► English summary of this concluding speech: This concluding speech was made "on the bench", i.e. directly after listening to all the day's speakers. It is not, therefore, based on an a priori conception of the subject, but on the impression that emerged from the whole, as one speaker followed another.

The general impression is that these compliance instruments, of which the vigilance tool is the spurred head, are only appropriate if they fulfill the purpose for which they were devised and imposed, which presupposes that they are appropriate to the concrete situations to which they apply: to the country, to the legislation that shapes and expresses this country, to its economy, to its population.

There is certainly room for improvement. But Vigilance legal instruments, like Compliance Law, are new mechanisms that are in the process of taking shape: we must seek to improve them and find solutions:

🧱🕴🏻mafr, 🚧Duty of Vigilance: the way forward, 2024

This is not easy, especially if we get lost in the jigsaw puzzle of texts and decisions in which the vigilance technique fits, particularly at French, European and international level:

🧱🕴🏻mafr, 🚧Vigilance, a piece of the European puzzle, 2023

Listening to all the many and varied speakers, it is clear that progress needs to be made to ensure that the Vigilance instrument takes greater account of the concrete situations reflected in the various legal systems of African countries, and in particular the unified OHADA legal system.

It can be done, as long as everyone is willing to bear it in mind.

🧱🕴🏻J.-B. Racine, 📝Geographical dominance in the choice and the use of compliance tools. Introductory remarks, in 🧱🕴🏻mafr (ed.), 📘Compliance Tools, 2021

The speakers demonstrated that the good feelings of Paris or Brussels can pave the way for African hell, for example when about the children labour. The same is true of the fight against corruption, as Mohamed Salah showed.

🧱🕴🏻M.M. Salah ,📝Conception and Application of Compliance in Africa, in 🧱🕴🏻mafr (ed.), 📘Compliance Tools, 2021

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Meanwhile, listening to each other, it appears that often, despite using the same words, the speakers were not talking about the same thing, particularly not in terms of what the very term "Vigilance" refers to, the difference between the French and English being a challenge because "due diligences" are not the same than Vigilance duty . This is a sign that what we call a duty, or an obligation, or a spontaneous commitment, or a legal order criminally sanctioned, which are not at all the same thing, shows the immaturity of this notion of "Vigilance". What's more, we sometimes talk about the climate, or human rights, or the need to fight corruption or money laundering. These latter concerns are undoubtedly covered by texts classified under Compliance Law, some of which assert that Vigilance is the cutting edge, while others claim that Compliance is alien to or merely a component of Vigilance, because Vigilance embraces ethics, while Compliance is merely obedience to the norm ('conformity').

It is clear that the absence of an agreement on definitions is a handicap in practice, as we do not know which legal regime will apply. This uncertainty is problematic in practice because the regulations don't  lay down definitions which alone make it possible to deduce the outline of the obligations of each party, particularly not those of the companies, which ask for instructions for use. Companies receive contradictory interpretations for the same situation, depending on who you are dealing with (a regulator or an NGO for example) or depending on the text (a text specific to the industrial activity, a text specific to the country, or a text from the country of the ordering company on the duty of vigilance, or a text from ordinary contract law or a text that will come from a soft law that remains rather mysterious).

This uncertainty feeds the passion that surrounds the issue of vigilance, with everyone speaking out, the specialists who want to talk about it being suspected of being a technocrat or captured, and those who don't speak out being the local population for whom others speak out.

As a result, two phenomena are set to persist, which we had hardly anticipated but which are set to increase: the contractualisation of all vigilance mechanisms and the jurisdictionalisation of all vigilance organisation.

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The first phenomenon is the contracting of Vigilance. This contractualisation is the means by which companies have been carrying out their legal compliance obligations for years, using a contractual art that is becoming increasingly sophisticated.

We have very little information on these contracts, which are nonetheless what allow companies to obey the regulations and also to add to them, a combination of obedience and contractual freedom, the effects of which in practice have not yet been fully measured.

🧱🕴🏻mafr, 🚧Will, Heart and Calculation, the Three Traits Encercling the Compliance Obligation, 2024

🧱🕴🏻mafr (ed.), 📘Compliance and Contract, 2025

But they do raise essential questions. Firstly, they will bring back the jurisdiction of general courts , for example the commercial courts (tribunaux de commerce) in France, and the courts of the countries where the industrial operations take place: moreover, they are the natural route to international arbitration. They are a new type of contract, since they structure "value chains" (a managerial concept).

🧱🕴🏻mafr, 🚧Compliance Contract, Compliance Clauses, 2022

There are two key issues concerning these contracts: they directly concern African countries, their economic activity and their populations, as described throughout all the speeches.

The first is to know who governs the structural apparatus constituted by these 'regulatory contracts' through which chains of activity are built as durable structures. Who is strong and who is weak, between companies and states?

The second is to find out how much of the reality of the country and of local economic activity is taken into account by the subsidiary, and how much consideration is given to the local people involved: are the people who are actually involved really "taken into consideration" when we speak for them? Who is best placed to speak on their behalf, to defend them, to get to know them?

If we want to contextualise, refine and get to know the situation as closely as possible, in other words if we want to have definitions so that we know what we are talking about, but at the same time start from geographical and human realities, then it is the Judge who appears because the court starts from the facts.

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This is the second phenomenon that has emerged and is set to increase: the jurisdictionalisation of Vigilance.

🧱🕴🏻mafr (ed.), 📘Compliance Jurisdictionalisation, 2023

This is understandable, since the judge is able to take cognisance of the facts, the situation in Uganda or Tanzania, and what is often referred to as the "extraterritoriality" of the Compliance mechanisms being thus compensated for.

However, the exclusive jurisdiction of the Paris Court of First Instance (decided in France by a 2021 law) may become more difficult, as it is even further away from Africa than the ordering company is. But it is precisely the contract judges who can be called upon to rule on the basis of Contract Law.

This central role of the judge raises a number of procedural difficulties that have either not yet been resolved, moreover are not still being perceive

🧱🕴🏻mafr (dir.), 🧮Le Droit processuel de la Vigilance (Vigilance Genreral Procedural Law), 2024

At the interface between procedure and substance, evidentiary issues require the development of a new evidentiary system. When the relevant facts are in Africa but the company accountable for them is in France under legislation adopted in Europe, this must be taken into account.

🧱🕴🏻mafr, 📝The Judge, the Compliance Obligation and the Company. The Compliance Evidence System, in 🧱🕴🏻mafr (ed.), 📘Compliance Jurisdictionalisation, 2023

What's more, since the Monumental Goal is to prevent, manage and detect risks, it is the future that is the main object of proof. A difficult subject by its very nature of the future, which calls for caution. Caution is to be expected from Judges, who may prefer the solution of an agreement: the contract and the commitment come back, for example through mediation, among the methods of conflict resolution.

But as close as possible to where it happens, OHADA's courts can then be called upon to hear States and populations.

What is more, in contractualisation (at which point the two major phenomena, contractualisation and jurisdictionalisation, enter into a dialectic), the clauses work together to activate the natural judge of the international contract, including vigilance clauses: the international arbitrator.

🧱🕴🏻L. Aynès, 📝How international arbitration can reinforce the Compliance Obligation, in 🧱🕴🏻mafr (ed.), 📘Compliance Obligation, 2025

OHADA has institutional arbitration mechanisms.

Now is the time to guide them so that they open up Africa to Vigilance and open up Vigilance to Africa.

In concrete terms.

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► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, Audition as amica curiae by the Paris First Instance Civil Court, in summary proceedings, on the Compliance System and the place of the duty of vigilance in it, 26 October 2022

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The hearing was held in the presence of two other amici curiae, also appointed by the Court: Professors Jean-Baptiste Racine and Bruno Deffains.

The hearing was requested by and on the initiative of the Paris First Instance Civil Court in connection with a dispute between associations and TotalEnergie, the former alleging breaches of due diligence by the latter, and the Court asking highly qualified individuals to shed light on the Compliance System and its implications.

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📝read the hearing report published on 27 October 2022 by Olivia Dufour (Actu-juridique)

📝read the article reporting on the hearing of 7 December 2022, representing the presentation of Compliance Law by MaFR, published on 7 December 2022 by Mathilde Golla (Les Echos)

📝read the article on the use of amicus curiae, starting with the use made in this case, published on 8 December 2022 by Nicolas Cayrol (Recueil Dalloz)

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Référence complète : Rharrabi, H, L"La compliance en droit marocain : une notion en devenir", Remald, juin-juillet 2022. 

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Référence complète : Kemfouet, E.-D.,  Énergies renouvelables, transition énergétique et enjeux climatiques en droit africain, Revue Africaine de Droit de l’Environnement (African Journal of Environmental Law),n°6, nov. 2021.

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Lire le volume. 

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Émile-Derlin KEMFOUET

► Compliance Law is essential for the future of Africa: this is also a lesson from the Juin 2021 G7 Summit in its Infrastructure Plan. 

It emerges from the G7 summit which ends on June 13, 2021 in Carbis Bay in the United Kingdom, a common desire to increase infrastructures in Africa, in itself and because otherwise China will do it, and will do it differently.

Compliance Law will be determinant in this common action for three reasons.

First and because the issue is about infrastructures, the construction and the management of infrastructures falling more under Regulatory Law than Competition Law (📕Chevalier, J.-M., Frison-Roche, M.-A, Keppler, J.EPPLER, J.H. et Noumba, P. (ed.), Économie et droit de la régulation des infrastructures. Perspectives des pays en voie de développement, 2009). However, Compliance Law is not a simple process for the effectiveness of rules which are external to it, it is the extension in companies of Regulatory Law. Where companies must implement regulatory goals within themselves, they develop Compliance rules (➡️📝see Frison-Roche, M.A., From Regulation Law to Compliance Law, 2017. 

Secondly and because the issue is about Africa, the Rule of Law is sometimes not very solid there. By internalizing Regulatory Law in companies (or even by associating Arbitration with it), Compliance Law makes it possible to get out of this dead end (➡️📝Salah, MM, Conception and Application of Compliance in Africa, in 📕 Frison-Roche, M.-A. (ed.), Compliance Tools, 2021.

Thirdly and because the topic si about China, Compliance Law in its European conception has the Monumental Goal of defending individuals while in its Chinese conception it aims to obtain their obedience to the rules (➡️📝Frison-Roche, M.-A., In China, Compliance Law deploys without, and even against democracy, China seeing Compliance only as an "efficiency process"; in Europe, it deploys with and even for democracy, 2021). On construction sites and in the human management of infrastructures, this changes everything.

G7 members share the first conception.

They must now implement it by their companies and thanks to them, private sector being in alliance with the political authorities which just expressed. Because Compliance Law is an alliance between political authorities and crucial economic operators.

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► Full Reference : J.-B. Racine, "Propos introductifs. La prégnance géographique dans le choix et l'usage des outils de la Compliance" ("Introductory remarks. Geographical dominance in the choice of Compliance Tools"), in M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), Les outils de la Compliance, coll. "Régulations & Compliance", Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Dalloz, 2021, p. 157-164.

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📕read a general presentation of the book, Les outils de la Compliance, in which this article is published

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► Summary of the article (done by the Journal of Regulation & Compliance): The author correlates Compliance Law and "Global Law" and underlines the balance of power that the former expresses, in particular on the part of the United States and even if it therefore "tends to become universal" , the particularities remain, if only in the implementation.

Focusing more particularly on "Compliance Tools", a comparison is made between several contributions of the volume, to establish that, in a definitive and desirable way, the Compliance mechanisms include both a global dimension and a local dimension.

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