Chapter 2 OBLIGATIONS OF TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS UNDER INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW: A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK (original) (raw)
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2013
In the context of neoliberal globalisation, the enhanced projection of corporate power appears to have increased the chances of transnational corporations (TNCs) becoming embroiled in human rights violations. Reactively, the United Nations has expended significant political capital over the past thirteen years in its attempt to construct a framework to mitigate these negative human rights impacts. However, this emerging regime has proved to be controversial for activists and academics, due to its lack of enforcement mechanisms, as well as the conceptual minimalism inherent in its redistribution of rights responsibilities. When analysing its anachronistic theoretical underpinnings, and its misguided belief in the power of norm dynamics to alter corporate behaviour, the inadequacies of this minimalist framework are clearly exposed. Overall, the available empirical analyses into this fledgling field of study suggest that the prevailing international framework has failed to provoke a synthesis of internationally proclaimed human rights standards with the sphere of transnational corporate activity.
Resumen: Este artículo enumera las principales razones por las que las Empresas Multinacionales son una amenaza para los derechos humanos, así como para otros derechos muy importantes, individuales y colectivos. El artículo llama entonces la atención sobre los defectos y desventajas de los mecanismos existentes de protección de los derechos humanos frente a las Multinacionales. Palabras clave: empresas multinacionales, empresas transnacionales, derechos humanos, códigos de conducta, tribunales nacionales, tribunales internacionales, ATCA.
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...
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European Integration Studies, 2021
The international legal liability of companies for human rights violations is a very current issue, since nowadays multinational and transnational corporations more and more frequently violate human rights. However, the establishment of the direct international legal liability of business actors for human rights violations is a long and difficult process. The present study seeks to analyse the efforts of the United Nations in this regard.
Emerging International Human Rights Norms for Transnational Corporations
Global Governance, 2009
This article analyzes the emergence of new human rights norms for transnational corporations. It first explores voluntary norm-making approaches, which have been a staple of this issue area since the 1970s. Second, it analyzes the formulation and eventual fall of ...
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...