Human Rights Responsibilities Research Articles

A relational analysis of enterprise obligations and carbon majors for climate justice

A coherent theory of climate justice must answer the question of “who owes what to whom, and why?” This paper considers the human rights responsibilities of business enterprises for climate injustice. I first introduce a relational approach to legal analysis, drawing upon the work of diverse theorists who confront the dominant yet unacknowledged prevalence of the bounded autonomous individual of liberal thought in diverse areas of law and policy, and offer a method for reinterpretation and transformation of law in the Anthropocene. I then examine the 2018 Principles on Climate Obligations of Enterprises, drafted by a sub-group of the legal experts responsible for the 2015 Oslo Principles. Ultimately, I argue that a coherent theory of justice in the Anthropocene is dependent upon relational insights which enable us to tell old stories in new ways, and so reveal the interconnectedness and interdependence of all beings, while accounting for power and difference.

A Rights-based Approach to Oil Spill Investigations: A Case Study of the Bodo Community Oil Spill in Nigeria

Oil-bearing local communities in resource-rich developing countries suffer human rights violations after an oil spill. The violations arise as a result of impacted water sources, destruction of the environment and access to food, affected economic livelihood, etcetera. In the oil spill investigation process, the existing laws do not incorporate an assessment of the human rights impacts of the spill, to forestall subsequent human rights infringement when another oil spill occur. The Bodo community oil spill in Nigeria is a case in point. This article utilises a Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) framework to examine the oil spill investigation regime in Nigeria, regarding the Bodo community oil spill. The essence is to identify the flaws in the investigation process, assist in holding duty-bearers accountable to their human rights obligations and responsibilities while empowering local communities as right-holders in the oil spill investigation process. This article seeks to incorporate the HRIA framework into the oil spill investigation regime to prevent further human rights violations post-oil spill. It notes that the application of the core procedural elements of HRIA – DM-PACT - is fundamental to improving the human rights experience after an oil spill. As a result, the framework could be mainstreamed into policy, legal, regulatory processes and management systems to enhance restorative and energy justice post-spill and to enhance post-spill or accident investigation to improve the human rights experience in the energy sector.

Сучасний стан управління персоналом на підприємствах: виклики та перспективи

HR management provides for the availability of administrative tasks related to hiring and remuneration of employees of the company. As a separate management function, it aims to recruit and maintain the high-quality workforce required by the organization to achieve its goals. The article is aimed at studying the existing experience of development of the human resources management system at enterprises in the conditions of compliance with the principles of corporate social responsibility. In the course of achieving the goal of the study, a number of such tasks were solved, in particular: the directions of research in the sphere of HR management were analyzed; an assessment of existing international framework documents and initiatives in the sphere of HR management was carried out; the changes in the management of activities on work with staff of enterprises were examined; proposals to improve existing HR management trends at enterprises were scientifically substantiated. It is substantiated that the methodological principles of policy development and internal organizational-regulatory documents on HR management and its development require further research. The organization of the manager’s work depends on the organizational structure and type of activity of the enterprise. It is stressed that the responsibility for human rights is a global standard of expected behavior for all enterprises wherever they operate. It exists regardless of the ability and/or willingness of the countries to fulfill their own human rights obligations and does not diminish these obligations. The work of the HR manager is of particular importance at the present stage of implementation of the concept of focus on the creation of human capital as the most valuable asset of enterprise. The main instruments for counteracting the challenges of building up an effective human resources management system at the enterprise are the development of a roadmap of actions with further control over the implementation of the actions and measures; disclosure and transparency of activities to the employees of the enterprise; involving employees in the implementation of certain elements of the human resources management system. The methodological principles of policy development and internal organizational-regulatory documents on HR management and its development require further research.

Polycentricity and Polyphony in International Law. Interpreting the Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human Rights

Complex multi-actors and multi-level governance structures have emerged in areas that were traditional exclusive preserve of the State and treaty-making. The adoption of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) affirmed a corporate responsibility to respect human rights to be implemented through human rights due diligence (HRDD), i.e. via management processes. By design, the open-ended character of the Principles generated the emergence of other soft instruments offering guidance to corporations in structuring HRDD. This contribution conceptualises the UNGPs from the perspective of regulation as a principles-based exercise in polycentric governance reliant on regulatory intermediaries for their interpretation. It subsequently assesses the potential role of various sui generis normative instruments in providing interpretation to the UNGPs and, specifically, how the presence of an additional layer of interpretative material contributes to the institutionalisation of responsible corporate conduct. The analysis of instruments drafted by international, nongovernmental and business organisations reveals both a decentralising tension between different intermediaries due to disagreements concerning the precise extent of corporate human rights responsibilities, as well as attempts to centralise the interpretation of the UNGPs. The paper concludes by warranting some caution towards the employment of polycentric governance regimes and their lack of centralised interpretive authority in this domain of international law.

Guiding principles on business and human rights: The important attempt to address corporate human rights abuses

The rapid increase of power of transnational corporations and other business enterprises prompted initiatives for the international legal regulation of these entities with regard to human rights. This paper provides a critical overview of the first globally accepted standard that regulates human rights responsibilities of transnational corporations, namely the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) - an international instrument consisting of 31 principles implementing the United Nations 'Protect, Respect and Remedy' framework on this issue of human rights and transnational corporations, and other business enterprises. The paper examines the UNGPs' three pillars: a) the state duty to protect human rights; b) the corporate responsibility to protect human rights; and c) access to remedy for victims of corporate violations of human rights. It also provides a brief introduction to initiatives that preceded the UNGPs. While presenting the advantages of addressing the business-related human rights abuses through the soft law instrument, the paper also addresses a number of shortcomings of the soft law approach that underlie the UNGPs.

Corporate Responsibility for Wealth Creation and Human Rights: a Book Project

As it is seen, this work is actually an unpublished materials regarding a book project. In this book I attempt to argue for a radically new understanding of the ethics of business enterprises or “corporate responsibility” in the global context. It is new in three respects. First, the purpose of the economy is defined as creating wealth in a comprehensive sense. As a consequence, business enterprises as primarily economic entities are called to pursue this purpose that lies beyond maximizing profit or adding value. Second, business enterprises operate in an increasingly interconnected world. They consist of human beings and affect human beings from the local to the global level. To evaluate their impact, we have worldwide standards stipulated in international agreements: the human rights including civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights and the right to development. With the United Nations Framework (2008) and the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UN 2011) business enterprises have become accountable in a new way – in addition to States – for their impact on human rights. Third, not only individual business people but also business enterprises as organizations – independent of the duties of nation-states – carry moral obligations regarding human rights. This means that moral (and not only legal) obligations are attributed to organizations understood as moral actors (but not as moral persons). Without such theoretical underpinning, it would not make sense to talk of environmental, social or economic responsibilities of corporations.

Business and Human Rights Scholarship in Social Issues in Management: An Analytical Review

AbstractBusiness and human rights (BHR) scholarship addresses whether corporations have human rights responsibilities and if so, what such responsibilities mean for corporate behaviour. BHR scholarship is cross-disciplinary and scattered across numerous academic disciplines such as law, philosophy, management, political science and accounting. While BHR scholarship in law is well established, this review focuses on BHR scholarship in the social issues in management (SIM) field, which – like BHR scholarship – addresses the nature and content of corporate responsibility. Based on a review of 180 articles from SIM speciality journals published between 1990 and 2017, the article suggests that BHR research has emerged as a subfield of study within SIM. BHR scholarship to date has largely focused on the justification for why firms have human rights responsibilities, and on descriptive research studies at the organizational and macro level. The article develops a conceptual framework for future BHR research which can usefully guide scholars – both SIM and non-SIM BHR scholars – in identifying potential research gaps and embedding their research in related focus areas.

Silencing women in the digital age

In this paper I explore some of the ways in which developments in new digital technologies reproduce, and often amplify, the patriarchal structures, practices and culture of contemporary life and, in doing so, operate to silence women through exclusion and through violence. I consider how international human rights law – most notably the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) – can be harnessed to counter both forms of silencing in that each is rooted in gender-based discrimination. The digital gender divide and the rise in online violence against women evidences the failure on the part of States Parties to fully commit to their legal obligations pursuant to CEDAW. Ensuring equality of access to, and use of, digital technologies cannot be anything other than the preconditions to ensuring that women can benefit from, contribute to, and influence the development of digital technologies in a meaningful manner. The digital realm may be a privatised public space that warrants a reconceptualisation of the scope and content of human rights law but the fact that much of the digital infrastructure is owned and controlled by private actors does not absolve States of their human rights responsibilities.

Addressing indirect discrimination and gender stereotypes in AI virtual personal assistants: the role of international human rights law

Virtual personal assistants (VPAs) are increasingly becoming a common aspect of everyday living. However, with female names, voices and characters, these devices appear to reproduce harmful gender stereotypes about the role of women in society and the type of work women perform. Designed to ‘assist’, VPAs – such as Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa – reproduce and reify the idea that women are subordinate to men, and exist to be ‘used’ by men. Despite their ubiquity, these aspects of their design have seen little critical attention in scholarship, and the potential legal responses to this issue have yet to be fully canvassed. Accordingly, this article sets out to critique the reproduction of negative gender stereotypes in VPAs and explores the provisions and findings within international women's rights law to assess both how this constitutes indirect discrimination and possible means for redress. In this regard, this article explores the obligation to protect women from discrimination at the hands of private actors under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the work of the Committee on Discrimination Against Women on gender stereotyping. With regard to corporate human rights responsibilities, the role of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights is examined, as well as domestic enforcement mechanisms for international human rights norms and standards, noting the limitations to date in enforcing human rights compliance by multinational private actors.

Human Rights in the Age of Platforms

Scholars from across law and internet and media studies examine the human rights implications of today's platform society.Today such companies as Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter play an increasingly important role in how users form and express opinions, encounter information, debate, disagree, mobilize, and maintain their privacy. What are the human rights implications of an online domain managed by privately owned platforms? According to the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, adopted by the UN Human Right Council in 2011, businesses have a responsibility to respect human rights and to carry out human rights due diligence. But this goal is dependent on the willingness of states to encode such norms into business regulations and of companies to comply. In this volume, contributors from across law and internet and media studies examine the state of human rights in today's platform society.The contributors consider the ?datafication? of society, including the economic model of data extraction and the conceptualization of privacy. They examine online advertising, content moderation, corporate storytelling around human rights, and other platform practices. Finally, they discuss the relationship between human rights law and private actors, addressing such issues as private companies' human rights responsibilities and content regulation.ContributorsAnja Bechmann, Fernando Bermejo, Agnes Callamard, Mikkel Flyverbom, Rikke Frank Jorgensen, Molly K. Land, Tarlach McGonagle, Jens-Erik Mai, Joris van Hoboken, Glen Whelan, Jillian C. York, Shoshana Zuboff, Ethan ZuckermanOpen access edition published with generous support from Knowledge Unlatched and the Danish Council for Independent Research.

Human Rights Responsibility for the Impacts of Climate Change: Revisiting the Assumptions

In a report published in 2009, the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) noted that qualifying the effects of climate change as human rights violations posed a series of technical obstacles. More than a decade later, no court has found that the greenhouse gas emissions of a particular actor relate causally to adverse climate change impacts for the purpose of establishing liability, but human rights arguments are increasingly used in climate change litigation. Yet, plaintiffs and petitioners around the world have increasingly relied on human rights to prompt state and corporate actors to complain about harms associated with the impacts of climate change. This litigation has demonstrated that human rights law and institutions often provide the only means available to complain for the harm produced by climate change, and as such, are at the frontline of climate accountability at the international, national and subnational level. This article therefore revisits the assumptions made in 2009 by the OHCHR and suggests that human rights be used as an interim ‘gap-filler’ while other areas of law gear up to satisfactorily redress the harms caused by the impacts of climate change.

State investments and human rights? The case of the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore how the Norwegian Government incorporated its responsibility for human rights into the investment practices of its Global Pension Fund and how human rights issues were negotiated when exclusion was considered.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on a series of interviews the authors analyse the way in which responsibility for human rights has been translated into the practices of the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global.FindingsThe paper documents how a large investment fund used several mechanisms to address human rights risks. The authors demonstrate that different logics among actors sometimes impeded addressing human rights issues. The findings demonstrate that sovereign wealth funds (SWF) can be held accountable for human rights.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper illustrates the difficulty of co-operation between actors with different logics. This can result in institutional conflict, but also in positive outcomes for human rights.Practical implicationsAttempts to introduce human rights into state investments may result in increased institutional complexity. The findings indicate that state investors can address human rights issues, but that the ability to do so is diminished where divestment creates political tension.Social implicationsLarge investors can influence companies on specific human rights issues.Originality/valueThis is one of the first empirical investigations of the human rights practices of a SWF. The authors contribute to the literatures on accounting and human rights, SWF and institutional theory.

Moral Repair for Corporate Human Rights Wrongs: The Role of Symbolic Remedies

Much of the research on corporate human rights responsibility has been dealing with the clarification both of the foundations and justification of such responsibility as well as of the parameters of corporate human rights violations and the prevention thereof. This contribution, on the other hand, deals with the aftermath of corporate human rights violations, that is, with the still neglected topic of corporate human rights remedy. More specifically, the paper addresses non-material, that is, symbolic or moral dimensions of remedy-provision and the role that corporations can and ought to play in providing it. It presents four different limitations of the current remedy discussion, which are at the heart of that neglect. Based on this, it develops a typology of moral reparation and introduces symbolic remedies as a means for such reparatory efforts.

Exploring Migrant Employees’ ‘Rights-Talk’ in the British Hospitality Sector

AbstractHow do migrant employees understand and articulate human rights in the British hospitality sector? This article contributes to the discussion on the translation of human rights responsibility in business by introducing ‘rights-talk’ as an analytical lens to explore and theorize about employees’ situated understanding and uses of human rights as a language and a moral evaluative frame. The analysis highlights the importance of (in)equality in employees’ everyday experience of rights, and points to several disincentives for them to engage with and in rights-talk including social and organizational disrespect, managerial disregard for employees’ claims, and their largely connotative use of human rights language. These insights advance theorizing and open research avenues on the significance of human rights in organizations from a bottom-up perspective, while the inquiry’s micro-level focus enriches business and human rights’ methodological toolbox. The findings are also significant for business human rights responsibility in contexts of heightened anti-immigration discourse and policies.

Legislación ambiental en Colombia: ayer, hoy y desafíos

El presente artículo examina la importancia que se ha dado al cuidado y protección de medio ambiente a partir de la Constitución Política de 1991 y la normatividad ambiental nacional. Se realiza también una revisión de la norma más relevante de carácter ambiental promulgada desde finales del siglo pasado en Colombia a la luz de la normatividad internacional, con el objetivo único de cuidar y proteger la madre tierra. Nuestra Constitución actual, denominada constitución ecológica o constitución verde por doctrinantes y jurisconsultos, consagra un cúmulo de principios, deberes y derechos sobre este tema que hacen parte de la noción del Estado Social de Derecho, forma como se define el estado colombiano, en aras a brindar especial protección al medio ambiente y por ende, poder ser garante de un modelo de desarrollo sostenible. Se concluye que el ordenamiento constitucional colombiano, en consonancia con los principios del Derecho Internacional Ambiental (DIA), tiene claro su objetivo, cuidar la vida desde un profundo sentido de responsabilidad social, de inclusión y respeto por los derechos humanos, los sociales, económicos, colectivos y del medio ambiente.

The Connection between Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Respect for Human Rights

Abstract The purpose of this article is to study the connection between corporate respect for human rights and corporate social responsibility. The author argues that business entities have a responsibility to respect human rights and that this responsibility forms part of their corporate social responsibility. The author defends the view that business and human rights issues are distinct from corporate social responsibility issues in their legal nature and content, while the strategic approach in the implementation of these concepts is the same. The author further examines whether voluntary corporate social responsibility initiatives include human rights, and how society understands the connection between the two. The conclusions of the article shed light on the interconnection between these two terms.

Applicability of human rights standards in Turkish football arbitration: the contribution of the European Court of Human Rights

The sole governing body in the field of football, the Turkish Football Federation (TFF), performs official tasks assigned to it by the legislation and has been furnished with the opportunity to benefit from public privileges. The Arbitration Board of TFF is the compulsory and ultimate legal forum for disciplinary and administrative issues, and no appeal is allowed to court in accordance with Article 59 (3) of the Turkish Constitution and the relevant provisions of the Law No. 5894. However, constitutional law and human rights concerns are almost totally neglected in the field of Turkish football. TFF has rejected to apply human rights standards, and the Turkish Constitutional Court has approved TFF’s approach. That is why victims of alleged human rights violations have applied to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for the actions and decisions of TFF. ECtHR has very recently started to examine the disputes regarding football matters brought against Turkey and has invited the Turkish Government to provide its responses in eight applications pending before it. Possible outcomes of these pending cases are not yet known. Thus, this article seeks to analyze whether and under which circumstances TFF’s activities and decisions can be attributed to the Turkish State under the ECHR, and the applicability of fair trial standards to compulsory arbitration. The article argues that taking into account of TFF’s legal nature as a quasi-public authority and the existence of the compulsory arbitration as a sole legal remedy in football-related disputes, governmental human rights responsibility, is triggered under European Convention on Human Rights.

Human rights encounters in small places: the contestation of human rights responsibilities in three Dutch municipalities

This article investigates engagements of local authorities with human rights in the field of irregular migration in a small town, medium-sized city and a rural municipality in the Netherlands. Although scholarship on human rights cities constitutes an important point of departure for this study, this article challenges the urban bias in this emerging body of research on the role of local authorities in processes of human rights localization. Drawing from theories of legal pluralism, scholarship on human rights practice and encounters and finally geographical insights, the article examines spatial dimensions of human rights practices of municipal actors in these three municipalities. More specifically, it investigates how in these municipalities the presence of and encounters with irregular migrants in local institutional spaces contribute to a local contestation of human rights responsibilities and examines how this process of contesting human rights responsibilities differs between these municipalities. The article draws on and develops scholarship on human rights encounters, by extending the scope beyond encounters at high seas and by explicating how power dynamics, temporalities and the sites of encounters can give rise to perceptions of duties that set these encounters apart from everyday sociabilities or encounters with difference. On the basis of a qualitative content analysis of municipal council documents and proceedings this study moreover found considerable differences with regard to how human rights responsibilities are contested locally by municipal actors. This study observed both differences among municipalities and differences among municipal actors within a single municipality in relation to these local understandings of human rights and perceptions of human rights responsibilities.

Global Citizenship

There appears to be general agreement among Canadian and American social work educators regarding the need to instill a global perspective in our students in order to better prepare them for leadership in the 21st century. While Canadian schools of social work have long included content on universal human rights in their curriculum, this content is still largely lacking in the U.S. This paper will present “global citizenship” as a useful model for integrating this crucial content into social work education. It encourages students to make a professional commitment to human rights literacy (knowledge), empathy (concern), and responsibility (action).

Universities as Human Rights Actors

This policy and practice note explores the possibilities of a vision of human rights protection that conceives of universities as human rights actors. This vision is situated in the broader human rights context, in which it is increasingly recognized that non-traditional human rights actors, rather than only the central government level, also bear responsibilities in the field of human rights. Given their crucial societal role, it is argued that universities should similarly take up their human rights responsibility. This note will present the case study of the human rights policy of Ghent University (Belgium), which applies to that university's international relations, as a good practice of how the human rights responsibility of universities can be operationalized. The paper concludes with a number of critical reflections.