This paper analyses five constitutional developments in Central and Eastern Europe that can impact the domestic implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). Using Czechia, Poland and Slovenia as examples, the paper highlights four potential drivers, namely: (1) the process of constitutionalizing human rights; (2) the proliferation of the doctrine of horizontal effect of constitutional rights; (3) the constitutional legitimacy of state intervention in the free market economy; and (4) the mechanism of judicial review. Furthermore, the author underlines the most significant challenge, which is increasing resistance to international norms in some countries, e.g., Poland. The paper concludes that the jurisprudence of the constitutional courts can facilitate the domestic implementation of the UNGPs, particularly Pillars I (State duty to protect human rights) and III (access to remedy).

This article presents an empirical study of six grievance mechanisms in multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs). It argues that key characteristics of each grievance mechanism as well as the contexts in which they operate significantly affect human rights outcomes. However, even the most successful mechanisms only manage to produce remedies in particular types of cases and contexts. The research also finds that it is prohibitively difficult to determine whether ‘effective’ remedy has been achieved in individual cases. Furthermore, the key intervention by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), to prescribe a set of effectiveness criteria for designing or revising MSI grievance mechanisms, itself appears ineffective in stimulating better outcomes for rights-holders. Drawing on these findings, the article reflects on the future potential and limitations of MSI grievance mechanisms within broader struggles to ensure business respect for human rights.

The corporate responsibility to respect human rights was formally introduced in 2011 with the unanimous endorsement of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) by the UN Human Rights Council. It is grounded in social expectations and forms part of the companies' “social license to operate.” This paper argues that this responsibility is progressively turning into a legal duty for lead companies to respect human rights in those types of value chains which are characterized by a high level of control by a lead company over its business partners. Our argument rests on two recent legal developments. Firstly, the article analyzes the judicialization of the corporate responsibility to respect in the case law on parent company liability in various jurisdictions, which, we argue, is highly likely to have some implications in relation to certain types of value chains so as to trigger the liability of lead companies for the human rights harms arising out of the activities of entities over which they exercise sufficient control. Secondly, the article delves into the legislative developments which increasingly require lead companies to exercise due diligence so as to prevent and address adverse human rights impacts in their own activities and global value chains.

Since the adoption of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights the relationship between human rights due diligence (HRDD) and corporate liability has been a source of legal uncertainty. In order to clarify this relationship, this article compares and contrasts civil liability provisions aiming at implementing HRDD. It explains the legal liability mechanisms in the draft Treaty on Business and Human Rights and in domestic mandatory HRDD legislation and initiatives such as the French Duty of Vigilance Law and the Swiss Responsible Business Initiative. It compares these developments with the emerging case law on parent company and supply chain liability for human rights abuses. It explores the potentially perverse effects that certain civil liability provisions and court decisions might have on companies’ practices. Finally, it makes recommendations for the design of effective liability mechanisms to implement HRDD.

The article examines the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) in the European Union via National Action Plans (NAPs). We argue that some of the shortcomings currently observed in the implementation process could effectively be addressed through the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) – a governance instrument already used by the European Union (EU) in other policy domains. The article sketches out the polycentric global governance approach envisaged by the UNGPs and discusses the institutional and policy background of their implementation in the EU. It provides an assessment of EU member states’ NAPs on business and human rights, as benchmarked against international NAP guidance, before relating experiences with the existing NAP process to the policy background and rationale of the OMC and considering the conditions for employing the OMC in the business and human rights domain. Building on a recent opinion of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency, the article concludes with a concrete proposal for developing an OMC on business and human rights in the EU.

The contribution argues that facticity of the human rights impacts of economic globalisation increasingly undermines the normativity of the state-centred conception of international human rights law. The exposure of the international legal order of states to the operations of global business entities leads to a collusion of sovereign state interest and globalised corporate power at the expense of protecting the rights of victims of human rights violations in the global market economy. The contribution scrutinises two prominent attempts to address this lacuna of protection: transnational tort litigation and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. It is argued that both approaches are not only an expression of the present crisis of international human rights law but also risk contributing to its perpetuation. While the ‘escape into tort’ results in the privatisation of public human rights in the global market economy, the UN Guiding Principles entrench their territorialisation in the state legal order in the face of global economic challenges. The concluding section reflects on the future pathways of international human rights law by positing a choice between, on the one hand, a more radical departure from human rights’ state-centred heritage and, on the other hand, a transformation of the international legal order of states by virtue of human rights. It highlights the importance of extraterritorial human rights obligations in recovering the state's legal accountability for human rights violations committed in the course of global business operations.

Growing reliance on ‘multi-stakeholder initiatives’ (MSIs) aimed at improving business performance with respect to specific human rights-related challenges has become a significant dimension of the evolving corporate responsibility agenda over recent decades. A number of such initiatives have developed in direct response to calls for greater state and corporate accountability in areas of weak governance and violent conflict. This article examines the evolution of key MSIs in light of the 2011 adoption of the United Nations (UN) Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and addresses challenges facing these initiatives in the future.