Responsibility Is the Way: Clouds and Silver Linings around the Idea of ‘Business for Peace’

Abstract

Abstract Renewed thinking on the idea of responsibility as the foundation of human relationships and of the relation of humans with nature is essential to face the current worldwide crises. While all people have an equal entitlement to rights, their responsibilities are proportionate to the possibilities open to them: freedom, access to knowledge, wealth and power. All increase the capacity for exercising responsibilities and the duty to account for them. The practice of responsibility as a two-fold commitment of assuming charges and accounting for one’s actions is affected by ethical erosion, fragmentation, controversy, rugged individualism and rapid structural changes at the global level and within societies partly due to unprecedented progress of the sciences and technologies. Moral appeals, codes of conduct, declarations and manifestos, and unbinding self-regulation in the field of Corporate Social Responsibility are insufficient to counteract structured ‘de-responsibilisation’ and irresponsible unsanctioned behaviour that undermine the solution of the current crises. A new international reference text on human responsibility, as a complement to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, setting out the basic principles of the idea of responsibility, and serving as a basis for international jurisdiction, must be a priority on the international agenda.