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

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sascha-Dominik Oliver Vladimir Bachmann ◽  
Pini Pavel Miretski
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Transnational Corporations ◽  
Global Business ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Business Enterprises

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’.

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 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.

Regolazione internazionale e responsabilitŕ globale delle imprese transnazionali

2009 ◽  
pp. 229-258
Author(s):  
Fabrizio Marrella
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Transnational Corporations ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
State Control ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
The Global Financial Crisis

- In recent years and before the global financial crisis, international law has struggled to regulate the activity of transnational corporations since the latter have greatly expanded their capacity for action on a global scale. Despite numerous efforts by the International Community to agree on a hard law international legal framework, the soft law process has been the primary arena for the regulation of transnational corporations and human rights. In addition, host state control, home state control and international responsibility of directors and companies itself have so far remained the fundamental avenues through which issues of global corporate responsibility have been assessed. ‘Contractualisation' of human rights has also been viewed as a further avenue to control the human rights impact of corporate activity. The UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises has generated an impressive stock of report capitalizing on issues well known in specialised international economic law literature. He is raising global awareness and institutionalizing new paradigms of understanding the complex relationship between business and human rights: a matter of vital importance for this century. The work of the UN Special Representative constitutes therefore a step forward towards an holistic approach of contemporary international law.

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