scholarly journals Business and Human Rights: The Evolving International Agenda

2007 ◽  
Vol 101 (4) ◽  
pp. 819-840 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Gerard Ruggie
Keyword(s):  
International Economic ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
International Economic Order ◽  
Transnational Corporations ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Business And Human Rights

The state-based system of global governance has struggled for more than a generation to adjust to the expanding reach and growing influence of transnational corporations. The United Nations first attempted to establish binding international rules to govern the activities of transnationals in the 1970s. That endeavor was initiated by developing countries as part of a broader regulatory program with redistributive aims known as the New International Economic Order. Human rights did not feature in this initiative. The Soviet bloc supported it while most industrialized countries were opposed. Negotiations ground to a halt after more than a decade, though they were not formally abandoned until 1992.

From a Stark Utopia to Everyday Utopias

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 575-606
Author(s):  
Michelle Staggs Kelsall
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Transnational Corporations ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Due Diligence ◽  
Karl Polanyi ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Council ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Human Rights Due Diligence

This article considers the emergence of the Business and Human Rights agenda at the United Nations (UN). It argues that the agenda can be seen as an example of the UN Human Rights Council attempting to institutionalise everyday utopias within an emerging global public domain. Utilising the concept of embedded pragmatism and tracing the underlying rationale for the emergence of the agenda to the work of Karl Polanyi, the article argues that the Business and Human Rights agenda seeks to institutionalise human rights due diligence processes within transnational corporations in order to create a pragmatic alternative to the stark utopia of laissez-faire liberal markets. It then provides an analytical account of the implications of human rights due diligence for the modes and techniques business utilises to assess human rights harm. It argues that due to the constraints imposed by the concept of embedded pragmatism and the normative indeterminacy of human rights, the Business and Human Rights agenda risks instituting human rights within the corporation through modes and techniques that maintain human rights as a language of crisis, rather than creating the space for novel, everyday utopias to emerge.

Negotiating a Treaty on Business and Human Rights: The Early Stages

2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Humberto Cantu Rivera
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Code Of Conduct ◽  
Transnational Corporations ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
International Obligation ◽  
The United Nations

The idea of subjecting corporations to some sort of international obligation, particularly in the field of human rights, is not new; different processes and ways of doing this have been debated since the 1970s, when a proposed all-encompassing Code of Conduct for Transnational Corporations was pushed through the ranks of the United Nations (‘UN’) Commission on Transnational Corporations

The Necessity for a Business and Human Rights Treaty

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
David BILCHITZ
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Working Group ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Transnational Corporations ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Legal Instrument ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Council

AbstractIn June 2014, the Human Rights Council passed a resolution establishing an inter-governmental working group to discuss a legally binding instrument relating to transnational corporations and other business enterprises. In this article, I outline four arguments for why such an instrument is desirable. Identifying the purpose of such a treaty is crucial in outlining a vision of what it should seek to achieve and in determining its content. The arguments indicate that a treaty is necessary to provide legal solutions to cure serious lacunae and ambiguities in the current framework of international law which have a serious negative impact upon the rights of individuals affected by corporate activities. The emphasis throughout is upon why a binding legal instrument is important, as opposed to softer forms of regulation such as the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The four arguments in turn provide the resources to respond to objections raised against the treaty and to reject an alternative, more restrictive proposal for a treaty that only addresses ‘gross’ human rights violations.

scholarly journals Economic Rights under the UN System and the Creation of a Newer International Economic Order

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Shenoy Amritha Viswanath
Keyword(s):  
International Economic ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
International Economic Order ◽  
Economic Order ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
The Impact

In the beginning of the human rights discourse, emphasis was on civil and political rights. Later, the thrust of the discourse moved to social and economic rights. Economic rights were demanded by the developing world manifesting in the form of Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources and the New International Economic Order. Due to the untiring efforts of these members, economic rights are reflected, enunciated and promoted in the international human rights instruments created under the aegis of the UN. The OHCHR has an innovative approach towards the guaranteeing of economic rights. For instance, the Office has a human rights approach towards poverty alleviation. It also recognises different duty holders in promoting human rights like the Transnational Corporations apart from the governments and civil society in ensuring human rights (especially in the interlinkages on Business and Human Rights). These new approaches has transformed the promotion of economic rights. The question is whether the international economic order has benefited from the promotion and guaranteeing of the economic rights. The aim of the present article is to analyse the impact of UN efforts in promoting economic rights and its repercussions on the formation of a newer international economic order.

scholarly journals Human Rights Responsibility of Multinational Corporations, Political Ecology of Injustice: Learning from Bhopal Thirty Plus?

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Upendra BAXI
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Transnational Corporations ◽  
Global Compact ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Guiding Principles ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Business Enterprises

AbstractThis article addresses human rights responsibilities of multinational corporations (MNCs) in the light of what I describe as the four Bhopal catastrophes. More than thirty years of struggle by the valiant violated people to seek justice is situated in the contemporary efforts of the United Nations to develop a new discursivity for human rights and business—from the Global Compact to the Draft Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights, the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and the more recent process to elaborate a legally-binding international instrument.

Dependent Development

1976 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Galal A. Amin
Keyword(s):  
International Economic ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Economic Order ◽  
Best Interests ◽  
The West ◽  
Dependent Development ◽  
Self Reliance ◽  
United Nations Declaration ◽  
The Cost

The paper is a critique of the development philosophy underlying the United Nations Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order. The author examines its postulates, including the proposed goal and the strategy, and comes to the conclusion, on general grounds as well as on the basis of experience, that ‘underdeveloped’ (or ‘developing’, to use the current euphemism) countries would be accepting them at the cost of their autonomy and the real welfare of their peoples; they would be deflected from pursuing goals which, even if modest in comparison, are both realizable and in their best interests. Developing countries, the author argues, would be ill-advised to be lured into a race with the West (in the name of ‘eliminating the gap’) which, even if worthwhile, they will inevitably lose. He advocates the strategy of self-reliance, and the concomitant temporary detachment from the international economic system, so that the developing countries may freely decide their destiny and work it out with their own efforts.

‘Poisonous Flowers on the Dust-heap of a Dying Capitalism’

2021 ◽  
pp. 463-478
Author(s):  
Michelle Staggs Kelsall
Keyword(s):  
International Economic ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Code Of Conduct ◽  
International Economic Order ◽  
Transnational Corporations ◽  
The World ◽  
Archival Record ◽  
To Come ◽  
Shed Light

This chapter revisits the failure of negotiations for a United Nations Code of Conduct on Transnational Corporations—the final blow in the attempt to create a New International Economic Order to facilitate equitable resource distribution in the world economy in the final quarter of last century. The chapter invites us to consider failure in international law and to rethink the parameters through which law comes into being. Drawing on the archival record of the Code negotiations, the chapter details the battle between states’ representatives to agree provisions and reconsiders what disagreement meant in this context, and what this can tell us about the struggle to create international law at any moment. It argues that the proceedings shed light on a dissensus present in international law that is often overlooked and framed as consent. By revisiting these proceedings, readers are invited to consider the uncertain certainty provided by international law as both necessary and contingent: it allows the greatest space for state representatives to determine how international law will operate (contingency) yet it is precisely what enables international law to come into being as law (necessity). Pondering this uncertainty gives international lawyers pause for greater reflection on the possibilities contained within international law (and by extension, international lawyering) at any given moment in time.

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