Abstract
Business enterprises have an independent responsibility to respect human rights. United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights provides global standard for preventing and addressing the risk of adverse impacts on human rights linked to business activities. This paper builds on the finding that Republic of Slovenia is one of the few countries that have adopted national action plan on business and human rights. Paper further argues that state-owned enterprises should play key role in promoting, respecting and protecting human rights in business. Slovenian state has capital investments in a number of major companies, therefore, its responsibility for protection of human rights in business is even greater. After analyzing Slovenian national action plan on business and human rights, paper focuses on its implementation in the Slovenian business practices. It is argued that all Slovenian state-owned enterprises should explicitly commit to respect human rights in business and to prevent possible negative impacts on human rights as state-owned enterprises should lead by example. Furthermore, such commitment of the Slovenian state-owned enterprises would be in accordance with the concept corporate human rights due diligence which is expected to become mandatory in the EU in the near future.
Highlights
Business enterprises’ binding obligations to respect human rights stem primarily from domestic legislation
Despite significant efforts by the international community, the United Nations International Treaty on Business and Human Rights has yet to be adopted and it seems questionable whether adoption of either that treaty or an alternative international legally binding instrument aiming at regulating activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises in the field of human rights is realistic in the near future
One of the obstacles is the resistance of many states to the adoption of an international treaty creating direct human rights obligations for corporations instead of a more classical and traditional view that only states are subjects of international law and, only states are in a position to bear international obligations (Bernaz, 2018)
Summary
Business enterprises’ binding obligations to respect human rights stem primarily from domestic legislation. The Resolution endorsed, inter alia, the Guiding Principles, and established a Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises. The Working Group encouraged all states to adopt national action plans on business and human rights as part of their responsibility to disseminate and implement the Guiding Principles. The fundamental aim of the Slovenian national action plan (hereinafter NAP) is to ensure that the Guiding Principles – as a set of guidelines that apply to all states and to all business enterprises – are implemented in practice. There are already some examples of mandatory corporate human rights due diligence legislation in EU Member States and the European Commission has committed to propose mandatory corporate due diligence legislation in 2021
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