ABSTRACT There is much contestation about the nature and scope of corporate human rights obligations under international law. Some maintain that corporations have a basic responsibility to avoid human rights violations in their operations; others argue for a wider scope of accountability, including a more active duty to protect human rights. I argue that corporations should have positive duties under international law to fulfil all human rights, especially socio-economic rights. I ground my argument in the staggering inequality that exists between the wealthiest corporations, on the one hand, and the poorest parts of the global population, on the other. This is entrenched by a perfect storm of global economic inequality, international trade, and transnational corporate power. This creates structural poverty, which enables conglomerates to generate profits that, promises notwithstanding, do not reach people living in indigency. This results in the anomaly whereby indigent communities actually subsidise corporate profits. It is this inequity and concomitant benefit, that justifies the imposition of positive duties on corporations to fulfil socio-economic rights. However, this duty is limited. I identify a series of interlocking factors, the coalescence of which creates a reasonable and justifiable imposition of human rights duties onto corporations.
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