scholarly journals Human Rights Responsibility of Multinational Corporations, Political Ecology of Injustice: Learning from Bhopal Thirty Plus?

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Upendra BAXI
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Transnational Corporations ◽  
Global Compact ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Guiding Principles ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Business Enterprises

AbstractThis article addresses human rights responsibilities of multinational corporations (MNCs) in the light of what I describe as the four Bhopal catastrophes. More than thirty years of struggle by the valiant violated people to seek justice is situated in the contemporary efforts of the United Nations to develop a new discursivity for human rights and business—from the Global Compact to the Draft Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights, the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and the more recent process to elaborate a legally-binding international instrument.

scholarly journals ‘The Elephant in the Room’: Corporate Tax Avoidance & Business and Human Rights

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shane DARCY
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Tax Avoidance ◽  
Corporate Tax ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Guiding Principles ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Human Costs ◽  
Corporate Social

AbstractThis article addresses tax avoidance by companies in the context of the emerging field of business and human rights. It describes the mechanics of corporate tax avoidance and the human costs of such practices. It then considers the extent to which tax issues have been addressed by corporate social responsibility, before turning to business and human rights and assessing the potential value of the United Nations Guiding Principles on business and human rights in this context. The article draws on the experience of Ireland, given the country’s connection to abusive tax practices associated with large multinational corporations and its support for the United Nations Guiding Principles on business and human rights.

scholarly journals INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSAL INSTITUTIONAL MECHANISM FOR HUMAN RIGHTS PROTECTION IN BUSINESS SPHERE

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Transnational Corporations ◽  
Human Rights Protection ◽  
Rights Protection ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Business Enterprises ◽  
Rights Issues

The article focuses on the functioning of the international universal institutional mechanism for the protection of human rights in business sphere. The importance of the statutory bodies of the United Nations, the officials who are empowered to make decisions on many issues related to a wide range of subjects of international legal relations, including the protection of human rights in business sphere, is emphasized, in particular: the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council, the Security Council, the Secretary-General. The role of the Human Rights Council as a body of the United Nations, which is responsible for promoting the universal respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, in the creation of specialized, narrow-profile human rights protection structures in business sphere has been defined. The powers of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Human Rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises have been described, with an emphasis on the significance of “Protect, respect and remedy” framework proposed by him. The attention is paid to the Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises. The importance of the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights as a dialogue center for the cooperation on business and human rights issues is highlighted. The emphasis is placed on the mandate of the Open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights, which provides the development of a legally binding instrument for regulating the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises in international human rights law. It is emphasized on the tasks performed by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in business and human rights issues, and its cooperation with specialized bodies in this area; its role in the promotion and implementation of the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights is highlighted.

From a Stark Utopia to Everyday Utopias

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 575-606
Author(s):  
Michelle Staggs Kelsall
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Transnational Corporations ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Due Diligence ◽  
Karl Polanyi ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Council ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Human Rights Due Diligence

This article considers the emergence of the Business and Human Rights agenda at the United Nations (UN). It argues that the agenda can be seen as an example of the UN Human Rights Council attempting to institutionalise everyday utopias within an emerging global public domain. Utilising the concept of embedded pragmatism and tracing the underlying rationale for the emergence of the agenda to the work of Karl Polanyi, the article argues that the Business and Human Rights agenda seeks to institutionalise human rights due diligence processes within transnational corporations in order to create a pragmatic alternative to the stark utopia of laissez-faire liberal markets. It then provides an analytical account of the implications of human rights due diligence for the modes and techniques business utilises to assess human rights harm. It argues that due to the constraints imposed by the concept of embedded pragmatism and the normative indeterminacy of human rights, the Business and Human Rights agenda risks instituting human rights within the corporation through modes and techniques that maintain human rights as a language of crisis, rather than creating the space for novel, everyday utopias to emerge.

scholarly journals Corporate Moral Agency and the Responsibility to Respect Human Rights in the UN Guiding Principles: Do Corporations Have Moral Rights?

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia H WERHANE
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Moral Rights ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Human Agent ◽  
Guiding Principles ◽  
The United Nations

AbstractIn 2011 the United Nations (UN) published the ‘Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect, and Remedy” Framework’ (Guiding Principles). The Guiding Principles specify that for-profit corporations have responsibilities to respect human rights. Do these responsibilities entail that corporations, too, have basic rights? The contention that corporations are moral persons is problematic because it confers moral status to an organization similar to that conferred to a human agent. I shall argue that corporations are not moral persons. But as collective bodies created, operated, and perpetuated by individual human moral agents, one can ascribe to corporations secondary moral agency as organizations. This ascription, I conclude, makes sense of the normative business responsibilities outlined in the Guiding Principles without committing one to the view that corporations are full moral persons.

Exploring care home providers’ public commitments to human rights in light of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (6) ◽  
pp. 357-367 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Emmer De Albuquerque Green
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Corporate Responsibility ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Care Home ◽  
Added Value ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Guiding Principles ◽  
The United Nations

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore care home providers’ public communications covering their commitments to respecting residents’ the human rights. The discussion considers the United Nations guiding principles on business and human rights United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and a domestic legal and regulatory human rights framework. Design/methodology/approach Qualitative content analysis undertaken in 2017 of 70 websites of England’s largest commercial care home providers. Findings There are strong value-based public commitments in the websites of many English care home providers, which may or may not be interpreted as expressing their commitments to human rights. Research limitations/implications Research was limited to websites, which are public facing and marketing tools of care home providers. This does not provide inferences regarding the practical implementation of value-based statements or human-rights-based procedures or policies. This paper does not make any value judgements regarding either the public communications of care home providers or normative claims regarding human rights and care home service provision. Practical implications There is a need for clarification and debate about the potential role and added value of the corporate responsibility to respect human rights and the UNGPs’ operating principles within the English residential care sector. Further exploration of the relationship between personalisation/person-centred care and human rights might be useful. Originality/value This paper introduces the UNGPs and corporate responsibility to respect human rights to the debate on human rights, personalised/person-centred care, safeguarding and care homes in England. It adds a new perspective to discussions of the human rights obligations of care home providers.

scholarly journals The UN 'Norms on the Responsibility of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights': A Requiem

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pini Pavel Miretski ◽  
Sascha-Dominik Bachmann
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Transnational Corporations ◽  
Global Business ◽  
Unsuccessful Attempt ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Adverse Impacts ◽  
Guiding Principles ◽  
Business Enterprises ◽  
Human Rights Norms ◽  
Alternative Solutions

On 11 June 2011, the United Nations Human Rights Council endorsed the ‘Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights’ as a new set of guiding principles for global business designed to provide a global standard for preventing and addressing the risk of adverse impacts on human rights linked to business activity. This outcome was preceded by an earlier unsuccessful attempt by a Sub-Commission of the UN Commission on Human Rights to win approval for a set of binding corporate human rights norms, the so called ‘Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights’. This article identifies and discusses the reasons why the Norms eventually failed to win approval by the then UN Commission on Human Rights. This discussion assists an understanding of the difficulties in establishing binding ‘hard law’ obligations for transnational corporations with regard to human rights within the wider framework of international law. It elucidates the possible motives as well as the underlying rationale which led first to the adoption and then the rapid abandoning of the Norms. The discussion also sheds light on the future of the voluntarism of business human rights compliance, on the likelihood of finding alternative solutions, and finally on the rationale for, and effect of, the ‘Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights’.

Negotiating a Treaty on Business and Human Rights: The Early Stages

2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Humberto Cantu Rivera
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Code Of Conduct ◽  
Transnational Corporations ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
International Obligation ◽  
The United Nations

The idea of subjecting corporations to some sort of international obligation, particularly in the field of human rights, is not new; different processes and ways of doing this have been debated since the 1970s, when a proposed all-encompassing Code of Conduct for Transnational Corporations was pushed through the ranks of the United Nations (‘UN’) Commission on Transnational Corporations

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