Business and Human Rights Regulation After the UN Guiding Principles: Accountability, Governance, Effectiveness

René Wolfsteller,Yingru Li

doi:10.1007/s12142-022-00656-2

René Wolfsteller, Yingru Li

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Since the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) were adopted by the UN Human Rights Council in 2011, they have diffused into policy frameworks, laws, and regulations across the globe. This special issue seeks to advance the interdisciplinary field of human rights research by examining key elements of the emerging transnational regime for the regulation of business and human rights. In seven original contributions, scholars from political science, law, accounting, and philosophy critically reflect on the theoretical foundations of the UNGPs, they analyze the effectiveness of implementation mechanisms and current regulatory practice, and they advance proposals for the future development of the business and human rights regime. In this introduction, we prepare the ground for these analyses, proceeding in three steps. Firstly, we argue that the adoption of the UNGPs has triggered a norm cascade which requires a distinctive, empirically oriented research agenda focusing on the scope, governance, and effectiveness of corporate human rights accountability norms and instruments. Secondly, we explain how the articles in this special issue contribute to that research agenda by addressing these themes. Thirdly, we provide an overview of the individual contributions and point out avenues for future research.

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Following the endorsement of the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in 2011, they have become widely regarded as “the most authoritative statement of the human rights duties or responsibilities of states and corporations adopted at the UN level” (De Schutter 2013: xvii)
Some of the most severe and widespread forms of corporate human rights abuse include the dislocation of indigenous communities without compensation or consultation, the impairment of people’s health and safety due to unfit working conditions and destruction of the environment, the leaking of individuals’ data to government agents, the denial of freedom of expression and of association, discrimination and sexual harassment at the workplace, and sweatshops, bonded labor, and child labor in the transnational supply chains of global brands
We argue that the concepts and insights of norm diffusion scholarship are useful for the interdisciplinary analysis of the business and human rights regime, and we explain how this special issue contributes to that research agenda

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Following the endorsement of the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in 2011, they have become widely regarded as “the most authoritative statement of the human rights duties or responsibilities of states and corporations adopted at the UN level” (De Schutter 2013: xvii).1 Developed in a worldwide consultation process by the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General (SRSG), John Ruggie, the UNGPs were aimed at tackling and preventing business-related human rights abuses by closing governance gaps in the largely unrestrained global market economy (Ruggie 2013: xxiii). many corporations contribute positively to realizing human rights, e.g., through job creation, the production and distribution of goods, services, and infrastructure, business activities impact negatively on human rights.

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