Human Rights for Business - Identifying Corporate Human Rights Responsibilities
(2007)Department of Law
- Abstract
- Corporate responsibilities with regard to human rights have long time been in the grey zone, but the area of human rights for businesses has been expanding rapidly. International instruments for corporate human rights responsibilities have been followed by voluntary initiatives, certification schemes, national standards and laws, and other tools and instruments. Analyzing the existing soft law one can find specific human rights that are repeatedly mentioned as relevant for corporate human rights responsibilities. This is a group of human rights, mostly labor rights, which businesses face most frequently. These rights, found in the most frequently used and most prestigious human rights instruments for businesses, are however not exhaustive.... (More)
- Corporate responsibilities with regard to human rights have long time been in the grey zone, but the area of human rights for businesses has been expanding rapidly. International instruments for corporate human rights responsibilities have been followed by voluntary initiatives, certification schemes, national standards and laws, and other tools and instruments. Analyzing the existing soft law one can find specific human rights that are repeatedly mentioned as relevant for corporate human rights responsibilities. This is a group of human rights, mostly labor rights, which businesses face most frequently. These rights, found in the most frequently used and most prestigious human rights instruments for businesses, are however not exhaustive. In order to identify human rights for which corporations and business entities may be held responsible for, the concept of ''sphere of influence and activity'' is developing in the international arena as this paper is being written. At this point of time, it is a non-legal concept, let be that some call it pre-legal. ''Sphere of influence'' tries to identify corporate responsibilities for human rights through demarcating the boundaries of corporate human rights responsibilities by factors such as: the size of the company in question, the relationship with its partners, the nature of its operations, and the proximity of people to its operations. States having the primary responsibility for human rights, the concept is also helping to draw boundaries between corporate responsibilities and obligations of states. When monitoring and controlling the implementation of corporate human rights responsibilities, reporting and auditing top the list of tools used by the business community. Both tools have problems with credibility and independence, something that may be improved by informational regulations. The OECD has introduced a ''specific instances'' mechanism which so far has turned out to be rather respected. The emerging implementation tool is today the Human Rights Impact Assessment, which is gaining more and more importance in the business community as a way to predict human rights risks for businesses and prevent human rights violations in advance, rather than react to problems already caused. An international legal framework for corporate human rights responsibilities may be emerging, but the main problem still remains how to identify and impose which and whose human rights corporations and business entities may be held responsible for. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/1557331
- author
- Erkocevic, Edin
- supervisor
- organization
- year
- 2007
- type
- H3 - Professional qualifications (4 Years - )
- subject
- keywords
- Folkrätt
- language
- English
- id
- 1557331
- date added to LUP
- 2010-03-08 15:55:20
- date last changed
- 2010-03-08 15:55:20
@misc{1557331,
abstract = {{Corporate responsibilities with regard to human rights have long time been in the grey zone, but the area of human rights for businesses has been expanding rapidly. International instruments for corporate human rights responsibilities have been followed by voluntary initiatives, certification schemes, national standards and laws, and other tools and instruments. Analyzing the existing soft law one can find specific human rights that are repeatedly mentioned as relevant for corporate human rights responsibilities. This is a group of human rights, mostly labor rights, which businesses face most frequently. These rights, found in the most frequently used and most prestigious human rights instruments for businesses, are however not exhaustive. In order to identify human rights for which corporations and business entities may be held responsible for, the concept of ''sphere of influence and activity'' is developing in the international arena as this paper is being written. At this point of time, it is a non-legal concept, let be that some call it pre-legal. ''Sphere of influence'' tries to identify corporate responsibilities for human rights through demarcating the boundaries of corporate human rights responsibilities by factors such as: the size of the company in question, the relationship with its partners, the nature of its operations, and the proximity of people to its operations. States having the primary responsibility for human rights, the concept is also helping to draw boundaries between corporate responsibilities and obligations of states. When monitoring and controlling the implementation of corporate human rights responsibilities, reporting and auditing top the list of tools used by the business community. Both tools have problems with credibility and independence, something that may be improved by informational regulations. The OECD has introduced a ''specific instances'' mechanism which so far has turned out to be rather respected. The emerging implementation tool is today the Human Rights Impact Assessment, which is gaining more and more importance in the business community as a way to predict human rights risks for businesses and prevent human rights violations in advance, rather than react to problems already caused. An international legal framework for corporate human rights responsibilities may be emerging, but the main problem still remains how to identify and impose which and whose human rights corporations and business entities may be held responsible for.}},
author = {{Erkocevic, Edin}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Human Rights for Business - Identifying Corporate Human Rights Responsibilities}},
year = {{2007}},
}