New Business and Human Rights Laws—Support for Social Upgrading?

This chapter argues that regulation can occur through rankings and reporting by providing information about risks to rights allowing concerned citizens to exercise informed choice. This chapter examines the emergence and evolution of selected ranking and reporting frameworks in the expanding realm of business and human rights advocacy. Specifically, it examines how indicators in the form of rankings and reports evaluating the conduct of transnational corporate actors can serve as regulatory tools with potential to bridge a global governance gap that places human rights at risk. It explains the conditions that have led to coordination and collaboration among those entities engaged in creating reporting frameworks and rankings while nevertheless relying upon the competitive impulses of the business enterprises being ranked to assert influence. It also identifies why the businesses being ranked have been slow to deploy effective counterstrategies despite efforts to contest emerging reporting requirements. It considers the interaction of selected business and human rights indicators with recent laws regulating supply chain transparency in the United States and with recent global policy initiatives calling for business enterprises to conduct human rights impact assessments. It reviews some of the methodological and moral risks raised with respect to ranking rights. In conclusion, the chapter argues that in the ecology of global governance, these new business and human rights indicators will provide rights advocates with greater power and have the potential to play an important role in solidifying emerging soft law standards and in strengthening corporate self-regulation. The strategic use of indicators in the business and human rights realm could ultimately prove to make the commitments contained in voluntary codes of conduct to respect human rights obligatory.

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The Future of Business and Human Rights

10.1017/9781780686455 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Business And Human Rights ◽

The Future

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Can Multinational Corporations be responsible for human rights violation of its outsourcee company? Response of national or international law?

International and Comparative Law Review ◽

10.2478/iclr-2020-0007 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 20 (1) ◽

pp. 153-179

Author(s):

Alessandro Suppa ◽

Pavel Bureš

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

International Law ◽

Multinational Corporations ◽

Corporate Law ◽

International Economy ◽

Due Diligence ◽

Business And Human Rights ◽

Original Question ◽

Definition Of ◽

Human Rights Violation

SummaryNowadays, an important role in the world is played by Multinational Corporations (MNCs). They hire, produce, and influence the international economy, but also, they exploit, pollute. Their business activities might have a worldwide effect on human lives. The question of the responsibility of MNCs has drawn the attention of many scholars, mainly from the study field labelled “Business and Human Rights”. The present paper does not examine the topic under the same approach. The authors aim at presenting the issue in a broader perspective, exploring the concept of due diligence both in international and corporate law. In this paper, authors strategically use the uniformity of national legislations as a possible and alternative solution to the issue. They are aware of three fundamental factors: 1) the definition of MNCs needs to be as clear as possible, so to avoid any degree of uncertainty; 2) the outsourcing phenomenon interacts with that definition; 3) in case of no possibility to include outsourcing in the definition of MNC, the original question arises in a significant way.

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