7 - The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and Its Predecessors

Summary

This chapter provides a critical overview of the UNGPs and its three predecessors: the 1990 Draft Code, the Global Compact, and the Draft UN Norms. The current BHR treaty process, which is dealt with elsewhere in this book, is touched upon briefly because of space constraints. In providing an overview of various attempts at the UN level to regulate corporations, two arguments are made in this chapter. First, we should see the UNGPs as part of a continuing process to develop standards at the UN level, rather than as a complete new start. Second, it is argued that the UN has made too little and too slow progress in putting in place an effective regulatory regime. In making such an assessment about the progress made so far in ‘humanizing business’, the author attempts to step in the shoes of rights holders, because progress could be interpreted differently from the perspective of different stakeholders.