Business and Human Rights: The Challenge of Putting Principles into Practice and Regulating Global Supply Chains

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justine Nolan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Supply Chains ◽  
Global Supply Chains ◽  
Business And Human Rights

scholarly journals Collective Responsibility and the Limits of Disclosure in Regulating Global Supply Chains

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 143-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Villiers
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Supply Chains ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Business ◽  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
Company Law ◽  
Global Supply Chains ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Labour Exploitation

Global supply chains present major challenges for company law and corporate governance, nationally and internationally. Their increasing relevance in international business has led to a serious regulatory gap, especially in light of corporate involvement in human rights abuses, labour exploitation and environmental degradation. Alongside a number of international norms such as those expressed in the UN’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, there has been a proliferation in domestic and international law of disclosure provisions, mandating greater transparency by companies in response to the problems caused by global supply chains. In this paper, however, it is argued that disclosure is not a sufficient answer to such problems. It is suggested that we should approach the problems with a different conceptualisation of supply chain structures. If we regard them as ‘global poverty chains’, such a perspective brings about a moral response — a recognition that we have a collective responsibility to eradicate the poverty and suffering caused by the chains. This response necessitates that transparency requirements be altered and accompanied by a regulatory framework that empowers victims of poverty to be able to escape it.

scholarly journals Wages: An Overlooked Dimension of Business and Human Rights in Global Supply Chains

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Genevieve LEBARON
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Supply Chains ◽  
Poverty Line ◽  
Global Supply Chains ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Labour Exploitation ◽  
Living Wages ◽  
Human Rights Abuse ◽  
Forced Labour ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Wages – the monetary payments that workers receive from employers in exchange for their labour – are widely overlooked in academic and policy debates about human rights and business in global supply chains. They shouldn’t be. Just as living wages can insulate workers from human rights abuse and labour exploitation, wages that hover around or below the poverty line, compounded by illegal practices like wage theft and delayed payment, leave workers vulnerable to severe labour exploitation and human rights abuse. This article draws on data from a study of global tea and cocoa supply chains to explore the impact of wages on one of the most severe human rights abuses experienced in global supply chains, forced labour. Demonstrating that low-wage workers experience high vulnerability to forced labour in global supply chains, it argues that the role of wages in shaping or protecting workers from exploitation needs to be taken far more seriously by scholars and policymakers. When wages are ignored, so too is a crucial tool to protect human rights and heighten business accountability in global supply chains.

Modern Slavery in Global Supply Chains: Can National Action Plans on Business and Human Rights Close the Governance Gap?

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (02) ◽  
pp. 239-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Bulan HAMPTON
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Supply Chains ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Supply Chains ◽  
Action Plans ◽  
Early Assessment ◽  
Polycentric Governance ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Modern Slavery

AbstractFollowing the 2011 endorsement of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), states have begun to implement National Action Plans (NAPs) to operationalize the UNGPs. Using a case study approach and applying a conceptual framework for polycentric governance, this article aims to provide an early assessment of the effectiveness of NAPs adopted by the United Kingdom and the United States to combat one of the worst human rights abuses in global supply chains: modern slavery. This study demonstrates that both NAPs contain elements addressing the governance gaps surrounding modern slavery, such as enacting new laws, adapting existing regulations, strengthening multi-stakeholder mechanisms for business accountability, and promoting innovation. However, it is argued that the NAPs themselves were not the catalysts for the majority of these measures. This article concludes that states should optimize the five characteristics of polycentric governance outlined in this study to improve the relevance and effectiveness of NAPs as drivers of change.

Business and human rights: The challenge of putting principles into practice and regulating global supply chains

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justine Nolan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Supply Chains ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Global Supply Chains ◽  
Due Diligence ◽  
Business And Human Rights

This article examines a company’s responsibility to respect human rights, focusing in particular on corporate global supply chains. While global supply chains have long been associated with a range of human rights violations, a number of recent legislative initiatives both in Australia and elsewhere are applying traditional corporate concepts – such as due diligence and reporting – in a human rights framework, to ensure companies respect human rights wherever they operate.

scholarly journals Institutional actors as international law-makers in Business and Human Rights: The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and beyond

Pravni zapisi ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 594-617
Author(s):  
Jernej Letnar-Černič
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Global Supply Chains ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
Business Operations ◽  
Guiding Principles ◽  
Institutional Actors

Business and human rights is an interdisciplinary field, which advocates that both state and businesses are duty-holders of human rights obligations. The area of business and human rights aims to regulate and prevent negative impact of business operations at all levels of global supply chains. The approach of international law in this regard has so far been piecemeal. States have been traditionally a principal participant in the international community. Nonetheless, this article aims to test arguments submitted by Jovanović in his 2019 book "The Nature of International Law" that institutional non-state actors are capable of creating international legal rules. Equipped with this knowledge, this article argues that the UN Human Rights Council has through adoption of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights restated human rights obligations of states and indirectly of corporations in international law in order to protect the dignity of rights-holders in local and global environments

scholarly journals Integrating Human Rights and the Environment in Supply Chain Regulations

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (17) ◽  
pp. 9666
Author(s):  
Almut Schilling-Vacaflor
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Supply Chain ◽  
Supply Chains ◽  
Global Supply Chains ◽  
Equal Weight ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Policy Integration ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Society Business ◽  
Legal Norms

To address the negative externalities associated with global trade, countries in the Global North have increasingly adopted supply chain regulations. While global supply chains cause or contribute to interconnected environmental and human rights impacts, I show that supply chain regulations often exclusively target one policy domain. Furthermore, an analysis of the first experiences with the implementation of the French Duty of Vigilance law, which covers and gives equal weight to environmental and human rights risks, reveals that the inclusion of environmental and human rights standards in legal norms is not sufficient to ensure policy integration. The empirical focus here is on the soy and beef supply chains from Brazil to the European Union (EU), and the findings rely on an analysis of legal norms and company reports, field research at producing sites in Brazil and semi-structured interviews with civil society, business and state actors. For analyzing the data, I draw on the literature on environmental policy integration (EPI) and apply a framework that distinguishes between institutional, political and cognitive factors to discuss advances and challenges for integrating human rights and the environment in sustainability governance. The study concludes that more integrated approaches for regulating global supply chains would be needed to enable ‘just sustainability’.

scholarly journals Orchestration from Below? Trade Unions in the Global South, Transnational Business and Efforts to Orchestrate Continuous Improvement in Non-state Regulatory Initiatives

2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Rennie ◽  
Tim Connor ◽  
Annie Delaney ◽  
Shelley Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Supply Chains ◽  
Continuous Improvement ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Global South ◽  
Business Practices ◽  
Normative Framework ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
High Level

This article is centrally concerned with the mechanisms and processes through which human rights in transnational business practices can be respected and remedied when breached, with a particular focus on workers’ rights in global garment supply chains. The United Nations (‘UN’) Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (‘UNGPs’) represent a high-level attempt to provide a normative framework for these issues.

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