The UN Norms: A First Step to Universal Regulation of Transnational Corporations' Responsibilities for Human Rights? (original) (raw)
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Deakin Law Review, 2012
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...
The UN Human Rights Norms for Corporations: The Private Implications of Public International Law
Human Rights Law Review, 2006
Though many years in the making, the UN Human Rights Norms for Corporations only registered on the radars of most states, corporations and civil society organisations in August 2003 when they began to move up the ladder of the United Nation's policy-making processes. Since then they have been subject to intense, and sometimes intemperate, debate, scrutiny and controversy. A particular legal feature of the deliberations has been the focus on the closely related questions of the legal standing of the Norms in their present format (namely, an imperfect draft, and therefore, of no direct legal force), and what they might become (possiblyçthough not likely soonça treaty that speaks to corporations but binds states). A potent mix of distrust and suspicion, vested interests, politics and economics has given rise to a great deal of grand-standing *Professor, Chair in Human Rights Law,
African Journal of Law, Political Research and Administration, 2021
The international community has awoken to the reality that transnational corporations (TNCs) do not only control more resources than a good number of states. They wield enormous influence in the corporate world which greatly impacts on local cultures and initiatives. Many of these TNCs, who operate in developing states, engage in activities which frequently result in human rights abuses. Several states rely on the resources extracted by these large corporations as the main stay of their economies. Consequently, they lack the economic capacity and political will to effectively regulate the activities of the TNCs, leaving these entities to perpetrate human rights abuses in the local communities with impunity. Although the Human Rights Council, through the Inter-governmental working group on Business and Human Rights, has begun a treaty process on business and human rights to address these issues, the work of the IGWG, so far, has not adequately responded the root cause of the corporat...
2014
Framing is critical [to winning a public debate) because a frame, once established in the mind of the reader (or listener, viewer, etc.) leads that person almost inevitably to the conclusion desired by the framer, and it blocks consideration of other possible facts and interpretations.'-Framing expert, George Lakoff There is a critical question that is too frequently obscured in discussions of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (CPs): Why precisely is it that the most vocal and consistent critics of the CPs are human rights organizati0ns, precisely the groups that have been pushing the longest and hardest for a more effective, non-business-as-usual approach to corporate human rights abuse? Indeed, whether big or small, North-or South-based, international or local in orientation, or highly or loosely networked, human rights NCOs have consistently taken a critical posture toward the CPs. Although their openness to CP engagement has v3;r-ied, • each has tended to see the CP framework as "regressive," a "step backward" in the protection of human rights, 3 one based on a corporate good will model that not only has proven itself ineffective over decades of trial and creative experimentation, 4 but, that-most revealingly and consequentially-ignores the critical elements of a human rights approach to social change. Indeed, in order to render the CPs 1 George Lakoff, George Lakoff Manifesto 2, www.infoamerica.org/teori a_textos/manifiestoJakoff.p df; see also: George Lakoff, The All New Don't Think of an Elephant/ Know Your Values and Frame the Debate (2014). • Groups that do not take a human rights approach to community-based problem-solving as the primary emphasis of their work have. been more open to engaging the GPs. In this respect, I am highly sympathetic to the framing used in Chris Jochnick's contribution to this volume, while believing that it may oversuggest differences in the substance of the critical postures taken by human rights NGOs (as a category) toward the GPs. See infra, note 5• 3 See, e.g., FIDH et al., "Joint Civil Society Statement on the Draft Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights" (3 March 2011); Christopher Albin-Lackey, Human Rights Watch, "Without Rules: A Failed Approach to Corporate Accountability," in Human Rights Watch: 2013 World-Report (2013) (recognizing GPs as "woefully inadequate" by "setting a lower bar than international human rights standards"). 4 Indeed, international efforts at corporate voluntarism in the human rights field have been vigorously pursued at the highest levels since the 196os.
Corvinus Journal of International Affairs
While transnational corporations and other business enterprises have the capacity to foster economic well-being, development, technological improvement and wealth, trade and investment agreements often lead to policies and governmental measures with a negative impact on the full enjoyment of human rights. In 2014, the United Nations Human Rights Council decided to establish an open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights, whose mandate is to elaborate a binding instrument of international law. The paper offers a discussion of the progress achieved on the topic so far by focusing on the key challenges: the added value of a specific treaty, personal scope, material scope, the State duty to protect human rights, the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, the need for greater access to remedy for victims of business-related abuses, etc.
South African Journal on Human Rights, 2006
States are no longer the sole source of human rights violations. In the context of increasing economic globalisation, non-state actors — particularly transnational corporations (TNCs) — have assumed enormous powers which were once considered to fall within the exclusive preserve of the state. As a result, it has become increasingly difficult for states to regulate and control these actors to ensure that they do not commit human rights violations or that they are held accountable for those violations. The UN Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with regard to Human Rights (UN Norms) adopted in 2003 by the UN Sub-Commission for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights are the most significant step the international community has taken towards developin binding human rights standards for TNCs. Development of the UN Norms was motivated by the need to fill the vacuum created by lapses in the operation of the doctrine of state resp...