Business and Human Rights: Towards a Binding Treaty on the Activities of Transnational Corporations

Abstract

It is an inescapable fact that the relationship between business and human rights is inseparable especially in the current wave of globalization. The impacts of business activities on human rights cannot be understated just as is the importance of human rights to businesses. This relationship informs the need to regulate the impacts of business activities on human rights. While various attempts have been made under the UN level, all these have not recorded considerable success and there are presently no binding obligations on transnational corporation to respects human rights. Calls have been made however for the establishment of a binding treaty on business and human rights. There is established a working group tasked with the development of the treaty. A lot of questions are however still at fore on the viability of such a treaty, its nature it scope as well as it successes among others. This research therefore draws from these unanswered questions and seeks to give proposals on the way forward for this highly anticipated treaty. The research discusses the relationship between business and human rights, traces the journey in the regulations of activities of transnational corporations, evaluate the prospects for the anticipated treaty and gives recommendations and proposals on inter alia the nature, architecture as well as the design of this anticipated treaty.