Human Rights And Business

The global business environment has changed rapidly in the past decades, but the human rights and business discourse has often lagged behind. At the international level, hard law regulations still seem decades away. United Nations initiatives such as the Guiding Principles and the UN Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises are more than a step in the right direction. However, they alone are insufficient to prevent violations and ensure victims receive justice. This edited book uses a broad and pluralistic understanding of direct human rights obligations, concentrating on legally enforceable standards. The enforceability can come directly from international law, through national legislation, or through non-state actors. The contributions engage both with the law as it is as well as the law as it needs to be developed. In doing so, the book challenges the current reticence to recognise direct human rights obligations of corporations by highlighting the various tools already available for remedying corporate human rights impacts while pushing for the development of further mechanisms. This book and its contributors have followed pluralistic approaches to human rights and business. The book builds on existing literature, but also offers a unique contribution by considering the effectiveness and availability of current mechanisms as well as discussing gaps in the existing framework for human rights protection. The approach in this book allows for a clearer understanding of the global human rights framework, and the manner in which voluntary and binding initiatives can reinforce one another. By weaving together analysis on the current standards and practices with critical approaches, this book allows scholars and practitioners to capture the complexity of holding businesses accountable fortheir human rights impacts. Jernej Letnar Cernic is an Assistant Professor of Human Rights Law at the Graduate School of Government and European Studies (Kranj, Slovenia), where he serves as a Vice-Dean. Tara Van Ho is a Project Associate with the Essex Business & Human Rights Project and a member of the Essex Transitional Justice Network.