Corporate Human Rights Obligations: Moral or Political? (original) (raw)
Related papers
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.
European Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies
In the age of globalization few elements of the legal atmosphere are viewed with such universal public favor as is the guarantee of Human Rights. The advent of such guarantees is almost uniformly viewed as a mark of human progress, as conferring a positive benefit, as providing necessary relief from want or redress for wrongs of oppression. However, there are multiple ways to view the substance and employment of the Human Right as a source of legal remedy and as instrument of legal oversight. In a general way the idea of Human Rights follows on a long history of rights variously conceived, a history that extends back to the medieval or even the ancient period of the Western tradition. But the instrument employed today is, in fact, a modern innovation of very recent origin. In nascent form it first began to emerge in the interwar period within the British system when it was changing from an imperial to a commonwealth structure of legal oversight. Very soon it was also employed as the...
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...
Corporate Human Rights Violations: global prospects for legal action.
This book develops an analysis of the historical, political and legal contexts behind current demands by NGOs and the United Nations Human Rights Council to hold corporations accountable for their human rights violations. Based on an analysis of the range of mechanisms of accountability that currently exist, it argues that those demands are a response to the failure of neo-liberal politics that have dominated the practice of politics and law since the emergence of this debate in its current form in the 1970s.
Extraterritorial Human Rights Obligations of Multinational Corporations' Home Countries
Highlights in Business, Economics and Management
As multinational corporations pursue profits as organizations with significant influence, It is unavoidable that during their development process, they will infringe upon the human rights of the host country. To prevent such violations, certain scholars have suggested that multinational corporations should have human rights obligations in their home countries. This article will analyze whether the home country has a certain obligation to constrain the actions of multinational corporations that violate human rights from international treaties and past cases, and draw on some practical experience to propose suggestions for future development.