This article examines the legal as well as political feasibility of four potential options for a legally-binding international instrument in the area of business and human rights. The four options that the open-ended intergovernmental working group may wish to consider while negotiating an instrument are: (i) to clarify and strengthen the states’ duty to protect human rights, including extraterritorially; (ii) to oblige states, through a framework convention, to report on the adoption and implementation of national action plans on business and human rights; (iii) to impose direct human rights obligations on corporations and establish a new mechanism to monitor compliance with such obligations; and (iv) to impose duties of mutual legal assistance on states to ensure access to effective remedies for victims harmed by transnational operations of corporations. As these options are not mutually exclusive, the author argues that a hybrid instrument building on elements of the first and the fourth option may be the best way forward both in terms of political feasibility and improving access to effective remedies for victims.

This article considers the practices of companies worldwide in attempting to implement human rights due diligence (HRDD) as envisaged by the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Based on empirical research conducted through surveys and interviews, it analyses corporate practices in this area. It examines the responses of companies with reference to the core elements of implementing HRDD: identifying actual or potential human rights impacts; taking action to address these impacts; and tracking or monitoring the effectiveness of actions. In addition, the article places these practices in the context of the legal developments in the field of HRDD. The research shows the difference that dedicated HRDD – in comparison with non-human rights specific processes – can make in terms of identifying adverse human rights impacts of both the company as well as of those which are part of its business relationships.

In 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.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has evolved as a disruptive technology, impacting a wide range of human rights-related issues ranging from discrimination to supply chain due diligence. Given the increasing human rights obligations of companies and the intensifying discourse on AI and human rights, we shed light on the responsibilities of corporate actors in terms of human rights standards in the context of developing and using AI. What implications do human rights obligations have for companies developing and using AI? In our article, we discuss firstly whether AI inherently conflicts with human rights and human autonomy. Next, we discuss how AI might be linked to the beneficence criterion of AI ethics and how AI might be applied in human rights-related areas. Finally, we elaborate on individual aspects of what it means to conform to human rights, addressing AI-specific problem areas.

The 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza in Bangladesh brought global visibility to the human rights abuses experienced by women workers in the garment sector. As the spotlight on this incident dims, the need to hold the fashion sector accountable remains. In this article, we suggest that greater accountability could be achieved through the application of a human rights-informed understanding of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to promote gender justice in the sector. By drawing on international women’s rights law and sustainable fashion, we demonstrate how sustainability and gender justice are intimately connected, and illustrate what role the SDGs can play in promoting sustainable outcomes that are gender-just. The article unpacks concepts such as sustainability, the circular economy, social responsibility, and ethical fashion, and places the experiences of women workers within this context. Its principal contribution is a set of six requirements to ensure a gender perspective to the fashion industry’s role in implementing the SDGs.

In the last several decades a diverse movement has emerged that seeks to extend the accountability for human rights beyond governments and states, to businesses. Though the view that business has human rights responsibilities has attracted a great deal of positive attention, this view continues to face many reservations and unresolved questions.

Business ethicists have responded in a twofold manner. First, they have tried to formulate the general terms or frameworks within which the discussion might best proceed. Second, they have sought to answer several questions that these different frameworks pose: A. What are human rights and how justify one’s defence of them?; B. Who is responsible for human rights? What justifies their extension to business?; and C. What are the general features of business’s human rights responsibilities? Are they mandatory or voluntary? How are the specific human rights responsibilities of business to be determined?

Within the limited space of this article, this article seeks to critically examine where the discussion of these issues presently stands and what has been the contribution of business ethicists.

Germany and Norway are the two latest states to adopt laws mandating human rights due diligence by companies. Germany adopted a Law on Supply Chain Due Diligence (German Law) on 10 June 2021.1 The same day, the Norwegian parliament passed a Transparency Act (Norwegian Act) requiring human rights and decent work due diligence.2 Like the French Loi de Vigilance and the Dutch Child Labour Due Diligence Law, these laws provide further momentum for mandatory measures to promote corporate respect for human rights, including future regulations in the European Union (EU). While the aims are similar, the German and Norwegian laws contain certain important differences when it comes to the substance and scope of the due diligence requirement. In this context, adherence to international standards remains the way forward to ensure compliance with divergent requirements in different jurisdictions.

The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights endorse a risk management perspective of human rights due diligence, which may create ambiguities with regard to the nature of risk and the objectives of risk management. By ‘human rights risk’ we understand a business enterprise’s potential adverse human rights impacts. Human rights risk can be contrasted to an enterprise’s ‘social risk’ which refers to the actual and potential leverage that people or groups of people with a negative perception of corporate activity have on the business enterprise’s value.

This article puts forward the argument that due diligence in respect of human rights risk is conceptually incompatible with the management of social risk, because social risk management and human rights due diligence vary at each step of the risk management process (risk identification, risk measurement and assessment, risk reduction measures). To resolve this incompatibility, an effective integration of human rights due diligence processes into corporate risk management systems would require an elevation of human rights respect to a corporate goal that determines corporate strategy.

The claim that corporations have human rights obligations remains contentious and can be fraught with confusion. This article synthesizes existing corporate human rights theory and responds to objections to the idea that transnational corporations (TNCs) have human rights obligations. The argument proceeds in three stages. The first section describes the different forms TNCs take and explains why TNCs are properly understood as moral agents responsible for their policies and practices. The second section reviews and explains different philosophical theories of corporate human rights obligations. The third section articulates and responds to objections to the idea that corporations have human rights obligations. The main conclusion of this article is that there are multiple, compelling and overlapping justifications of corporate human rights obligations.

Business 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.

Firms’ human rights due diligence (HRDD) and communication on their human rights impacts are not only elements in the Corporate Responsibility to Respect human rights (Pillar Two), but also to be promoted by States as part of their State Duty to Protect (Pillar One) through regulatory strategies aiming at shaping business conduct. Analysing the EU’s 2014 Non-Financial Reporting Directive as an example of governmental regulation for promoting responsible business conduct, the article discusses conditions for HRDD and reporting as a communication process to stimulate organizational change in accordance with the UN Guiding Principles to avoid harm, including through affected-stakeholder engagement. Applying socio-legal regulatory theory along with organizational and accounting literature, the article finds that the Directive’s predominant focus on ex-post measures appears to be a neglected opportunity to induce ex-ante organizational learning and changed business conduct to prevent adverse human rights impact. It offers recommendations for regulators and stakeholders for stronger regulation.

In 2011 the United Nations (UN) published the ‘Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect, and Remedy” Framework’ (Guiding Principles). The Guiding Principles specify that for-profit corporations have responsibilities to respect human rights. Do these responsibilities entail that corporations, too, have basic rights? The contention that corporations are moral persons is problematic because it confers moral status to an organization similar to that conferred to a human agent. I shall argue that corporations are not moral persons. But as collective bodies created, operated, and perpetuated by individual human moral agents, one can ascribe to corporations secondary moral agency as organizations. This ascription, I conclude, makes sense of the normative business responsibilities outlined in the Guiding Principles without committing one to the view that corporations are full moral persons.

As of October 2018, 21 states have adopted National Action Plans on Business and Human Rights (NAPs), with several more in different phases of development. This is an important political step to raise awareness of the importance of intragovernmental policy coherence and of the need to move forward to prevent human rights abuses linked to business activity. However, despite the global intergovernmental support to such policy strategies, the actual effectiveness of NAPs needs to be called into question: do they represent progress, or are they a mirage to block possible avenues of development? Currently existing NAPs have done little (yet) to ensure more effective protection in key policy areas, including trade and investment, state-owned enterprises, and particularly in relation to legislative developments and access to remedy. This contribution seeks to analyse the merits of developing NAPs, the importance of ensuring they become only the very first step towards a more effective protection of human rights, and to question whether their importance needs to be adjusted to what they really are: policy tools with limited effects and with a politically linked time frame.

This article makes the case for a ‘holistic’ approach to human rights due diligence, arguing that such a standard must be interpreted in the light of mutually reinforcing principles of environmental law, climate law and human rights law. Through a review of emerging climate change-related litigation, it shows how a concept of ‘climate due diligence’ is gradually consolidating. Building on the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the article explores climate due diligence both as a standard of conduct and as a business process, presenting its main features. It argues that corporations should integrate climate due diligence into their processes and policies to be best prepared for likely regulatory and judicial developments, such as the upcoming European Union’s regulation on human rights and environmental due diligence.

This article discusses the evolution, current trends, limitations and controversies around the understanding and practice of human rights due diligence (HRDD), a concept developed in the course of the work of United Nations (UN)-mandate holder, John Ruggie, and enshrined in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. While the concept has gathered broad acceptance and a growing number of legislative proposals are seeking to entrench it in law, significant differences of opinion exist among stakeholders as to its nature, objectives and relationship, if any, with legal liability. These differing understandings are at play in a contest to shape future legislation. Some of these carry significant risks for rights-holders, notably the risk of outcome being superseded by process and superficial, compliance-oriented HRDD prevailing in the law or in its interpretation and practice. As legislative efforts continue, the authors warn against the risk of hollow laws which do little to change the status quo or, even worse, inadvertently provide a tool to further impunity for business-related human rights abuses.

This article analyses the human rights implications of impact investing, which aims to create positive social and environmental impacts in addition to financial returns. Reflecting growing awareness of the capacity of the global capital markets to advance sustainable development, companies and institutional investors are seeking new financial instruments and strategies. This article focuses on social bonds, a prominent and illuminating example of this phenomenon. Social bonds are debt securities sold to investors whose proceeds are used to finance projects with a defined social benefit such as affordable housing, education, food security, and access to healthcare. To analyse social bonds in the context of human rights, this article proposes a framework for evaluating human rights factors in impact investing and applies it to the social bond market. It finds that current standards and practices do not adequately account for the human rights implications of social bonds. In light of these observations, this article suggests reforms to the social bond market that enhance investor assessment, external assurance, and impact-maximizing leverage.

How do companies understand and talk about human rights? Do they consider human rights a moral, legal or political construct? What type of responsibility do they assume in respect of human rights (e.g., direct/indirect, narrow/broad)? Is the language and label of human rights used within day-to-day practice? This article attempts to address these questions by drawing on empirical data collected as part of an in-depth, qualitative study on the development of human rights within 22 UK companies. Through an analysis based on sensemaking, the article explores the meaning of human rights, the grounds used to justify corporate responsibility, and the human rights terminology and labels employed within the corporate setting. It then analyses what this understanding and discourse means for the debate about the role of private entities for the protection of human rights.

This article addresses tax avoidance by companies in the context of the emerging field of business and human rights. It describes the mechanics of corporate tax avoidance and the human costs of such practices. It then considers the extent to which tax issues have been addressed by corporate social responsibility, before turning to business and human rights and assessing the potential value of the United Nations Guiding Principles on business and human rights in this context. The article draws on the experience of Ireland, given the country’s connection to abusive tax practices associated with large multinational corporations and its support for the United Nations Guiding Principles on business and human rights.