Wages – the monetary payments that workers receive from employers in exchange for their labour – are widely overlooked in academic and policy debates about human rights and business in global supply chains. They shouldn’t be. Just as living wages can insulate workers from human rights abuse and labour exploitation, wages that hover around or below the poverty line, compounded by illegal practices like wage theft and delayed payment, leave workers vulnerable to severe labour exploitation and human rights abuse. This article draws on data from a study of global tea and cocoa supply chains to explore the impact of wages on one of the most severe human rights abuses experienced in global supply chains, forced labour. Demonstrating that low-wage workers experience high vulnerability to forced labour in global supply chains, it argues that the role of wages in shaping or protecting workers from exploitation needs to be taken far more seriously by scholars and policymakers. When wages are ignored, so too is a crucial tool to protect human rights and heighten business accountability in global supply chains.

This article explores the innovative use of public procurement as a tool to respect, protect and promote human rights by capitalizing on the significant leverage that public buyers have over corporate practices in their supply chain. It provides an analysis of Electronics Watch, an organization that focuses on the role of states’ own procurement practices as central to the state duty to protect the human rights of those who are affected by its activities as an economic actor. Through the assessment of the Electronics Watch model this article argues that by bringing together the economic leverage of public buyers and corporate human rights due diligence, one can create transformative tools for the improvement of working conditions in global supply chains.

This article considers the emerging practice of human rights impact assessment (HRIA) in the field of business and human rights. As HRIA is relatively new, current approaches vary considerably, indicating that there is a need for the business and human rights community to engage in further dialogue and debate about what good practice HRIA can and should entail. I propose five key criteria for HRIA of business activities: (1) applying international human rights standards; (2) considering the full scope of impacts; (3) adopting a human rights-based process; (4) ensuring accountability; and (5) addressing impacts according to severity. It is suggested that these criteria should form the basis of methodologies used to assess human rights impacts of business activities, with the view to developing HRIA practice that meaningfully contributes to preventing and addressing adverse impacts of business activities on the human rights enjoyment of workers and communities.

For the first time in four decades, leading business associations, corporations, and the corporate law and governance community are seriously debating moving beyond shareholder primacy toward some form of ‘stakeholder governance. But the how question unveils significant differences of opinion as well as difficulties. We focus on a pathway that complements the ambition of stakeholder governance, but which current reform proposals have largely overlooked. We draw on practical experience in the field of business and human rights, where leading companies are increasingly embedding human rights due diligence processes into their strategic decision-making. We contend that as human rights due diligence is made mandatory for companies, which it is in a growing number of jurisdictions, including for foreign firms with a significant business presence in them, risks to stakeholders become a material corporate governance issue. That makes it necessary for firms to address stakeholder concerns and to demonstrate that they are, with possible legal consequences for having failed to do where harm occurs. Such changes by themselves may not constitute a full-blown system of multi-fiduciary obligations, but they mark substantial strides on the path toward it, and they are doing it in the relatively near-term.

Mining operations in the Global South often worsen conditions for affected communities after the conclusion of the operations as compared to pre-mining conditions. This is regression, not progress, which is contrary to the narrative surrounding mining’s promise of economic growth. While mining certainly brings profit, this profit does not result in social and economic development of affected communities and people living in poverty. This is the ‘myth of mining’ and the objective of this article is to expose this myth, identify its failings and propose a notion of ‘equitable mining’ that could ensure a pro-poor mining industry.

This article assesses different approaches currently discussed and developed in international human rights and investment law to establish investor obligations. The article begins with a general framework of analysing and comparing these approaches. Next, attempts to include direct obligations of business entities in international human rights treaties are discussed. Despite earlier indications the recent initiative to create a legally binding instrument on business and human rights will most likely not include direct obligations for business entities. Subsequently, the article assesses the development of investor obligations in new international investment treaties and through the interpretation and application of existing international investment agreements. Arguably, the former will not lead to binding obligations in the foreseeable future and the latter rests on methodologically questionable grounds. Consequently, the article suggests that the way forward will require domestic legislation in host and home states to establish investor obligations which can be taken into account when interpreting existing investment treaty clauses requiring the investor to adhere to domestic law. This would reflect recent trends both in investment law reforms as well as the business and human rights movement.

How do companies respond to their critics? Are there significant differences in responsiveness between industrial sectors, between the countries in which companies are based, and between the companies themselves? Do responses reflect the belief that companies have a responsibility to respect human rights? Do companies that participate in the UN Global Compact react more responsibly than those that do not? This article attempts to answer these questions by examining company responses to civil society reports contained in the company response database of the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre. The analysis covers responses to 1877 requests made by the Resource Centre from 2005–2014.

This article examines the involvement of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) in both shaping and implementing the European Agenda on Migration (European Agenda), launched by the European Union in May 2015. The migration policies which have since been adopted have increasingly enabled the outsourcing to private security contractors of various border control operations, including those related to forced returns, administrative detention and security services for the Italian and Greek ‘hotspots’. The article argues that PMSCs frame, shape and entrench militarized responses in the European Agenda. It also contends that the current context of the European refugee ‘crisis’ meets the conditions of a high-risk context, as understood within the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). This re-definition of the refugee ‘crisis’ as a high-risk context, in turn, enables the identification of heightened human rights obligations of home states and responsibilities of companies when implementing the UNGPs.

This 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.

This article presents a review of the literature on the United Nations Guiding Principles (UNGPs) for the purpose of situating the UNGPs in the voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) infrastructure. We identify four key themes that underlie the debate: (1) a critical assessment of the UNGPs, (2) their application to different sectors, (3) a discussion of how to embed key aspects of the UNGPs into national and regional contexts, and (4) reflections on the role of due diligence. We discuss these themes and outline some practical and theoretical take-away messages. Our review highlights some similarities and differences to the discussion of voluntary initiatives in the field of CSR, especially the UN Global Compact. Our discussion helps to understand how the UNGPs are situated in the voluntary institutional infrastructure for CSR. Finally, we show how the theoretical and practical discourse on the UNGPs can be further advanced.

Ten years after the publication of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), implementation efforts are in full swing. Companies in particular have used their existing corporate social responsibility (CSR) structures to make sense of and implement Pillar II of the UNGPs. This process has led to a co-optation of the business and human rights (BHR) agenda. One manifestation of such co-optation is the instrumentalization of CSR to confront and undermine the growing trend towards binding BHR legislation. Accordingly, this contribution conceptualizes Pillar II implementation as a process of domestication, co-optation and confrontation of the BHR agenda. It makes sense of this process by juxtaposing it with long-standing critique against CSR put forth particularly by critical management scholars, raising the question whether CSR is indeed well-equipped to drive BHR implementation efforts within companies.

In 2017, France established a due diligence statutory obligation for French parent companies to monitor extraterritorial human rights and environmental abuses committed by their off-shore affiliates. Switzerland is also considering adopting a similar law for Swiss parent companies. These obligations are comparable to the duty of care that, according to recent case law, British parent companies owe towards their subsidiaries’ neighbours. This article compares and contrasts the newly introduced French due diligence statutory obligation, the UK precedents, and two alternative Swiss legislative proposals on the due diligence and duty of care of parent companies.

This article argues that there is a newer model of contracting for natural resources that expands the potential for corporate responsibility towards those adversely affected by business activities. It lays out the conceptual roadmap and justification underlying these shifts and changes in contracting for natural resources. The article calls for a renewed focus in exploring enforcement of corporate obligations for impacts to individuals and communities within a contractual framework. Examples of this type of arrangements include contracts that can be construed to allow third parties to sue on a contract; community development agreements; contracts between investors and communities; environmental contracts; human rights deeds, and investor–state–local community contracts (tripartite contracts). These contractual forms demonstrate that the law of contract has evolved from the nineteenth century idea that contracts merely protect the rights of investors without much concern for those who are directly affected by extractive industry operations. By including affected communities, indigenous communities, and others, these new contractual forms demonstrate that investors and governments are trustees and that extractive resources must be mobilized for the benefits of their publics. In so doing, we map this turn to contracts between multiple parties in the resource extraction context, and argue that it affirmatively demonstrates real potential to address or mitigate the absence of remedial and responsibility regimes for the adverse impacts of extractive industry activities on individuals and communities.

This paper presents an original framework designed to systematize understanding of corporate power over human rights. The framework disaggregates four sites of this power: corporations have direct power over individuals’ human rights, power over the materialities of human rights, power over institutions governing human rights, and power over knowledge around human rights. This disaggregation is derived primarily from the work of Barnett and Duvall and focuses on the effects of corporate activity rather than the Weberian understanding of power as the ability to achieve desired outcomes. The framework captures a broad set of corporate acts based on their (potential) harm to human rights. It is argued that understanding business and human rights through the lens of power can help to advance a more comprehensive account of business impacts on human rights.

What should be the interface of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) with other regulatory regimes in the business and human rights (BHR) universe? This article explores this issue in relation to two specific contexts. First, the interface of ‘social norm’ with evolving ‘legal norms’: relation of Pillar II of the UNGPs and mandatory human rights due diligence (HRDD) laws as well as parent companies’ direct duty of care for negligence. Second, the interface of ‘soft norms’ and evolving ‘hard norms’: how the UNGPs should inform the proposed BHR treaty. It is argued that legal norms should align with Pillar II only in a ‘loose manner’. They should draw from and build on the HRDD concept under Pillar II, but not be constrained by it, because a hard alignment of Pillar I laws with Pillar II could undercut the independent but complementary status of the two pillars. Moreover, the UNGPs should serve only as a ‘starting point’ and not the ‘end point’ in the evolution of other hard or soft norms in the future. Such an approach would be desirable because the UNGPs alone are unlikely to be enough to challenge or confront the existing structure of irresponsibility and inequality.

Mega-Sporting Events (MSEs) like the Olympics and FIFA World Cup inspire humanity and have the potential to promote human rights, including through job creation and urban regeneration. Yet for over a decade MSEs have been linked to a pattern of human rights abuses that reads like a panoply of Business and Human Rights themes. The very legitimacy and social license of MSEs is increasingly on the line. Yet we may have reached a tipping point. In the past year the Commonwealth Games Federation, FIFA, and the International Olympic Committee have begun to instigate human rights reforms. A new multi-stakeholder coalition, chaired by Mary Robinson and facilitated by IHRB, meanwhile is pursuing innovative collaborate solutions to the human rights issues at stake. Supported by international agencies, governments, sports bodies, sponsors and broadcasters, and civil society, this coalition seeks to promote learning and accountability in a sector for whom business and human rights is new territory.

The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (GPs) expect businesses to participate in operational-level, non-judicial mechanisms to address the grievances of communities affected by their activities. While there is guidance on operational-level grievance mechanisms as to what constitutes an effective process, inquiries into the effectiveness of outcomes have been met with less success. This article identifies three key incongruities within the GPs regarding effective outcomes: (1) the broader interpretation of remedy within the Remedy Pillar compared to the Respect Pillar; (2) the novelty of enforcing human rights through dialogue and engagement as opposed to adjudication; and (3) the difficulty in reconciling objective human rights standards with the subjective preferences of the parties. It then aims to resolve these issues by applying a human rights-based approach: examining how empowerment of communities can act as the founding basis for understanding whether an outcome is effective. It concludes by examining the working of the Porgera Mine mechanism from this perspective.

Following the 2011 endorsement of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), states have begun to implement National Action Plans (NAPs) to operationalize the UNGPs. Using a case study approach and applying a conceptual framework for polycentric governance, this article aims to provide an early assessment of the effectiveness of NAPs adopted by the United Kingdom and the United States to combat one of the worst human rights abuses in global supply chains: modern slavery. This study demonstrates that both NAPs contain elements addressing the governance gaps surrounding modern slavery, such as enacting new laws, adapting existing regulations, strengthening multi-stakeholder mechanisms for business accountability, and promoting innovation. However, it is argued that the NAPs themselves were not the catalysts for the majority of these measures. This article concludes that states should optimize the five characteristics of polycentric governance outlined in this study to improve the relevance and effectiveness of NAPs as drivers of change.