Corporate Responsibility For Human Rights Research Articles

Corporate Responsibility for Human Rights in Assam Tea Plantations: A Business and Human Rights Approach

This paper explores how UK-based companies deal with their responsibility to respect the human rights of Assam (India) tea plantation workers. Through qualitative content analysis of publicly available corporate reports and other documents, it investigates how companies approach and communicate their potential human rights impacts. It highlights the gap between well-documented human rights issues on the ground and corporate reports on these issues. It aims to answer the following research question: in a context where the existence of human rights violations at the end of the supply chain is well-documented, how do companies reconcile their possible connection with those violations and the corporate responsibility to respect human rights under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights? This paper reveals the weakness of the current corporate social responsibility (CSR) approach from the perspective of rights-holders. It supports a business and human rights approach, one that places the protection of human rights at its core.

Corporate Responsibility for Human Rights in Assam Tea Plantations - A Business and Human Rights Approach

This paper explores how UK-based companies deal with their responsibility to respect the human rights of Assam (India) tea plantations workers. Using publicly available corporate reports and other documents, it investigates how companies approach, and communicate on, their potential human rights impacts. It highlights the gap between well-documented human rights issues on the ground and corporate reports on these issues. It aims to answer the following research question: in a context where the existence of human rights violations at the end of the supply chain is well-documented, how do companies reconcile their possible connection with those violations and the corporate responsibility to respect human rights under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights? The paper reveals the weakness of the current CSR approach from the perspective of rights-holders. It supports a business and human rights approach, one that places the protection of human rights at its core.

Investor Obligations for Human Rights

Abstract Despite progress being made in the business and human rights field in defining corporate responsibility for human rights, defining foreign investors roles vis-à-vis human rights remains mainly stagnant. The idea that businesses have responsibility for human rights is well ensconced in global norms and is based on society's expectations of business in the 21st century. Yet despite this widespread recognition, international investment law is silent on the matter. This leaves a disconnect between the norms dictating the corporate responsibility for human rights in public international law and those found in international investment law. One way to better align progress in the business and human rights movement with international investment law is to introduce investor obligations for human rights. These obligations can be located both in investment treaties as well as in non-treaty sources. Moreover, investment arbitration provides multiple entrypoints for tribunals to consider such obligations, for example through counterclaims, jurisdictional claims, or admissibility claims, among others. Two primary benefits arise from introducing investor obligations for human rights. First, it can act as vehicle by which business and human rights norms, generally, can be enforced. Second, and more importantly, introducing investor obligations for human rights can help to better contextualize the interpretation of IIAs. Introducing such obligations can be used to remind tribunals that international investment law operates in a system that includes non-investment concerns such as human rights. Considering such obligations, in and of themselves, however, are unlikely to prompt wider changes in international investment law. Nevertheless, including investor obligations in international investment law may prompt tribunals to give more balanced interpretations to international investment agreements. This can work towards ensuring that international investment law serves its ultimate aim of promoting a state’s development.

Transnational Corporate Responsibility in Domestic Courts: Still Out of Reach?

Despite some modest progress, corporate responsibility for human rights abuses in domestic courts remains elusive. In U.S. federal courts, Alien Tort Statute (ATS) litigation is now more precarious than ever before. While there have been some potentially important developments in English courts, judges are reluctant to extend responsibility to parent corporations for harm caused by the operations of foreign subsidiaries. Although U.S. and English courts have been concerned with distinct doctrinal issues, the overall picture appears to be one of deference to the corporation and its anatomized form, and to the goal of promoting investment abroad.

Rights in a State Of Exception. The Deadly Colonial Ethics of Voluntary Corporate Responsibility for Human Rights

It is widely accepted that voluntary corporate responsibility for human rights is a means of continuing “business-as-usual”. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been denounced as “whitewash”, with little effect in practice. I claim here that voluntary CSR is far worse than “whitewash”: it actively bolsters corporate impunity by rendering the violence of development illegible and equating resistance with irrationality or subversion. It thrives upon the state of exception that provides the permissive context of human rights violations. I make this argument by returning to the birthplace of corporate responsibility for human rights: BP’s Colombian oilfields, combining ethnographic research with trenchant critique of the colonial myths informing mainstream discussion of business and human rights. The UN has responded to the potential of voluntary CSR to detract from abuses by emphasising the importance of judicial remedy. What the analysis here reveals is how voluntary measures and provision for judicial remedy may work in opposite directions. La responsabilidad social corporativa (RSC) ha sido acusada de ser una mera fachada. Aduzco aqui que es peor aun: refuerza activamente la impunidad empresarial, ya que rinde ininteligible la violencia del desarrollo y tilda toda resistencia de irracional o subversiva. Se alimenta de un estado de excepcion que proporciona un contexto propicio a las violaciones de derechos humanos (DDHH). Regreso al origen de la responsabilidad corporativa respecto a los DDHH –los campos petroliferos colombianos de BP–, para combinar la investigacion etnografica con una critica a la mitologia colonial que da forma al debate sobre empresas y DDHH. La ONU ha reconocido que la RSC voluntaria puede ocultar los abusos, subrayando la importancia del recurso judicial cuando las medidas voluntarias no alcanzan. No obstante, este articulo subraya que las medidas voluntarias y juridicas pueden servir distintos fines.Available from: https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-0973

Transnational Corporate Responsibility in Domestic Courts: Still Out of Reach?

Despite some modest progress, corporate responsibility for human rights abuses in domestic courts remains elusive. In U.S. federal courts, Alien Tort Statute (ATS) litigation is now more precarious than ever before. While there have been some potentially important developments in English courts, judges are reluctant to extend responsibility to parent corporations for harm caused by the operations of foreign subsidiaries. Although U.S. and English courts have been concerned with distinct doctrinal issues, the overall picture appears to be one of deference to the corporation and its anatomized form, and to the goal of promoting investment abroad.

Exploring the Extent of Corporate Responsibility for Human Rights in UK Companies

A key debate in the business and human rights field concerns the role and extent of corporate responsibility for human rights. Whilst frameworks exist that outline which human rights companies should respect, very little is known about how businesses perceive and determine their human rights responsibilities. To explore the depth of corporate involvement in human rights, this article presents empirical data collected as part of an in-depth, qualitative study on the interpretation and management of human rights within 22 UK companies. Using a sensemaking and organising framework, the paper identifies and analyses the factors that shaped the level of engagement in human rights and the grounds used to justify this involvement. It then analyses the implications of this data for the debate about the role that private entities should assume for the protection of human rights.

Corporate Responsibility for Human Rights Impacts: New Expectations and Paradigms, edited by Lara Blecher, Nancy Kaymar Stafford, and Gretchen C. Bellamy. New York: ABA Book Publishing, 2015. 508 pp. ISBN: 978-1-62722-391-1

Corporate Responsibility for Human Rights Impacts: New Expectations and Paradigms, edited by Lara Blecher, Nancy Kaymar Stafford, and Gretchen C. Bellamy. New York: ABA Book Publishing, 2015. 508 pp. ISBN: 978-1-62722-391-1

‘From naming and shaming to knowing and showing’: human rights and the power of corporate practice

A recent phenomenon in corporate governance discourses is a strong recourse to human rights. Human rights awareness and corporate policies have become part of the credo of ‘good’ business. This is also taken up in international institutions, such as the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which assign a distinct human rights responsibility to transnational enterprises. The article interprets this transformation through the lens of the ‘sociology of critique’. It argues that the concept of corporate responsibility for human rights represents a capacity of capitalism to absorb fundamental criticism and incorporate the very values that formed the ground for critique. The article proceeds in three steps: First, I present the corporate responsibility to respect human rights as a reaction to fundamental critique against global corporate giants that emerged as part of a broad ‘anti-globalisation’ movement in the 1990s. Second, I argue that today multinationals ‘know and show’ responsibility and make human rights a subject of management strategies and tools. Human rights are being incorporated and translated into corporate policy programmes. This allows companies to disarm most fundamental strands of criticism. Third, I draw conclusions from this perspective on the productive power of business practice and implications for critique.

La OCDE y los derechos humanos: el caso de las Directrices para Empresas Multinacionales y los Puntos de Contacto Nacional

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development updated its Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises in 2011, adding a human rights chapter and bolstering its implementation mechanism, the National Contact Points. These changes align the OECD instrument with the UN Guiding Principles on Business & Human Rights, also adopted in 2011, and help to create a synergy and convergence at the international level regarding standards on corporate responsibility for human rights. They constitute an important element in the field of business and human rights, and contribute to the development of a culture of responsible business conduct.

The Corporate Responsibility for Human Rights: A Conceptual Framework

In this modern society, the traditional concept by which only States and individuals can be held responsible for abuses of human rights is being called into question. There is an increasingly prominent debate emerging around business and human rights. This article contributes to this debate by analyzing, from a South African perspective, the extent to which international and national human rights law is applicable to companies. It will be argued that the greatest challenge for companies willing to carry out their human rights responsibilities is the great complexity of the issues involved. For instance, while the business activities of companies can impact human rights in numerous, often interconnected ways, the scope of company responsibility, both legally and with regard to stakeholders’ expectations, has so far not been defined precisely. This article therefore, seeks to make a contribution in this regard. The rationale being that companies are likely to face increasing expectations, pressures, and incentives for enhanced due diligence on human rights. This is premised on international policy trends and South African political and legal developments. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n3p219

The Role of National Human Rights Institutions in the Implementation of the UN Guiding Principles

National human rights institutions (NHRIs) are key domestic mechanisms for promotion and protection of human rights. The institutions' broad mandate, competencies, and special status between state and nonstate actors on the one hand, and special status between the national and international levels on the other hand enable them to engage effectively in the field of business and human rights. Since 2009, NHRIs have been engaging with the international human rights system in order to increase understanding and raise awareness of their role in addressing business and human rights issues. As a result, they have contributed to the development of the UN “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework and obtained an evolving role within all pillars of the framework and in its implementation. This paper presents how these domestic institutions, bridging the national and international levels, fit into the UN legal regime for corporate responsibility for human rights and what contribution they make to the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles.

Challenges and innovation in the legal discourse

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to map out the voluntary‐regulatory dynamics of the discourse of human rights in a business context within the European Union (EU) regulatory environment.Design/methodology/approachThe paper examines the human rights and corporate social responsibility (CSR) discourses at the EU institutional level, in order to identify the interplay between soft and hard regulatory instruments that may contribute to the “human rights for business” normative landscape.FindingsA renewed focus at the international level on business and human rights has recently produced a United Nations (UN) framework document mapping corporate and state responsibilities in the area of human rights (the UN SRSG Ruggie Framework). Emphasising voluntariness as main tool, but also recognizing the importance of domestic uses of corporate law, of the investment and trade agreements, as well as of the international development cooperation tools, this framework report is in need of “operationalisation”. Starting from the interface between domestic and international developments in CSR and human rights for business, the paper explores the extent to which the European CSR context can offer tools and instruments towards such an operationalisation of the corporate responsibility for human rights and for social values generally. The article charts the dynamic relationship between EU soft regulatory attempts and the community mandatory legislation. Together, these define the EU's policy on CSR and human rights.Originality/valueThe paper reveals an innovative normative mosaic, made up of complex soft and hard regulatory instruments that should enable the EU to integrate economic, trade and human rights policies and, ultimately, to contribute to the new CSR framework proposed at the international level.

Bernath Lecture: Commerce and Complicity: Corporate Responsibility for Human Rights Abuses as a Legacy of Nuremberg

I have long been fascinated by what we might call the dual face of the Nuremberg trials. This duality is the gap between how the trials unfolded in real time and what the proceedings have come to stand for today. Occasionally in popular memory the two phases of trials will be conflated, for instance, and lumped together under the English-language label “Nuremberg.”1 These thirteen trials have come to take on a kind of iconic stature in the postwar era, heavily criticized to be sure, and I discuss a variety of these critiques elsewhere.2 But as a symbol, “Nuremberg” is emblematic of a handful of particular qualities or lessons, and I've chosen three to highlight below, each one of which is actually a significant distortion or misperception in its own way. Yet each has also become a kind of human rights-related parable; and collectively they add up to what might be called the “Nuremberg idea” in history and memory.

Human Rights and the New Corporate Accountability: Learning from Recent Developments in Corporate Criminal Liability

The 3rd Report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations appears to have generated significant consensus around its approach to business and human rights. This state of harmony relies mainly upon a narrow mandate limiting the endeavour largely to a mapping exercise. It also relies upon a process of ‘operationalisation’ that is yet to be undertaken despite the recent release of a 4th Report. After a brief presentation of the main parameters of the framework proposed by the 3rd Report and of its precarious advantage over other similar initiatives, this article takes a close look at the main link that needs to be operationalised: i.e. the link between corporate responsibility for human rights and the concept of legal and criminal responsibility. The article then addresses the constitutive elements of the concept of responsibility to shed light upon the responsibility of business organisations in a human rights law context. It looks at the innovative ways in which the concept of corporate criminal responsibility has been dealt with in various domestic jurisdictions and at the new paradigms of corporate agency resulting in the process. Building on this inquiry, the analysis focusses on the way in which the legal discourse acquires new dimensions of corporate responsibility by moving away from an individualistic perspective. On the basis of this, the article suggests conceptual tools that can become instrumental in the process of the operationalisation of the 3rd Report, albeit at the likely cost of rendering the consensus around it more fragile.

Corporate Responsibility for Human Rights

A Review Essay on the 2008 report of the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the issue of human rights and Transnational corporations and other business enterprises, Professor John Ruggie to the United Nations Human Rights Council, Protect, Respect and Remedy: a Framework for Business and Human Rights AH/HRC/8/5, 7 April 2008.

Sanctioning Corporate Responsibility for Human Rights

Sanctioning Corporate Responsibility for Human Rights