Human rights due diligence (HRDD) is a buzzword in business and human rights (BHR) activities. However, multinational corporations (MNCs) often conduct it as a tick-box exercise without transparency. Using a relational contract theory, this article argues that when MNCs contract with local communities through community development agreements (CDAs) to perform HRDD, such contracts are internationalized relational contracts that attract a level of good faith. An established principle in international economic law, good faith serves as a standard for assessing conduct designed to discharge obligations in international contracts between states and MNCs (investor-state contracts). Similar to how investor-state arbitration tribunals use good faith jurisprudence in regulating the relationship between states and MNCs, this article proposes a BHR good faith jurisprudence to prescribe how HRDD obligations should be discharged. The article concludes that a good faith interpretational exercise in BHR would (1) reduce MNCs’ cosmetic compliance with HRDD principles; (2) increase transparency in the HRDD exercise; and (3) become a source of rights for local communities to enforce corporate accountability.

Globally, companies are developing and implementing their strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, in line with the Paris Agreement. However, there is also growing recognition and awareness of the potential negative impacts of these activities on human rights. Recent pressure from international normative standards and ESG expectations, emerging legislative developments, and legal precedents are driving companies to consider human rights impacts across their climate action. This piece explores some of the human rights risks associated with the transition to renewable energy; the transformation to regenerative agriculture; the scaling up of the circular economy; and the implementation of nature-based solutions. It then explores the challenges of conducting effective human rights due diligence given the scale and scope of the transitions needed and provides examples of how companies are seeking to respect human rights in their climate action.

After the endorsement of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) by the Human Rights Council on 16 June 2011, 15 March 2024 marked another milestone for transnational corporate governance. That day, a qualified majority of the member states of the European Union (EU) voted in favour of the Directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence (CSDDD) setting human rights and environmental obligations for large companies in their global value chains.1 The CSDDD is the first region-wide due diligence legislation, yet it is also a political compromise among EU member states, which civil society and business have been watching closely. This piece explains the main elements of the CSDDD and outlines some of its implications beyond the EU.

The FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 received an unprecedented amount of criticism from civil society and human rights organizations for the human rights risks and adverse human rights impacts related to organizing and staging the event. Interestingly, it was the first World Cup that was delivered with a team of human rights volunteers monitoring human rights issues at event venues on match days.1 Given the novelty of this project, this Article first informs about the FIFA human rights volunteers (HRV) program in general and second, it analyses to what extent it can be considered a concrete and practical example of an organization’s human rights due diligence (HRDD) and remedy efforts. As some of the broader business and human rights literature suggests, there seems to be a lack of practical examples of how corporations implement HRDD, making FIFA’s HRV program an exception worth studying.

After the unanimous endorsement of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) by the Human Rights Council in June 2011, human rights due diligence (HRDD) has become a common currency widely embraced among stakeholders operating in the business and human rights (BHR) field. The UNGPs envisage HRDD to be the primary tool for businesses to identify, prevent, mitigate and account for adverse impacts of their activities on internationally recognized human rights.

There has been tremendous momentum in adoption of business and human rights regulations, specifically national legislation that mandate human rights due diligence. While these laws have been heralded as the torchbearers of progress, this article approaches national legislation on business and human rights by placing them in context of a North–South divide through a Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) lens. It looks at the form of regulation of transnational corporations (national/international) – not the substance – and illustrates the neo-colonial flavour of these laws by diving into the narrative behind the adoption of the French devoir de vigilance law. It illustrates that the French law can also be read as an attempt to universalise European values while reinforcing power hierarchies. The claim of this article is that national legislation cannot be a substitute for a treaty but only a path towards one, because national legislation structurally lacks means to take the Global South participation seriously.

The increasing focus on business and human rights (BHR) in civil society and policymaking has not been matched by research on corporate actions to respect and protect human rights. The lack of research on BHR is especially acute outside of Western Europe and Anglo-centric contexts. This paper seeks to investigate how the largest Russian firms conceptualize and fulfil their human rights obligations under the UN Guiding Principles and the extent to which internationalization of those firms may have impacted these behaviours. I use a unique dataset created from a sample made of the 100 largest firms listed on the Moscow Stock Exchange. Using the theoretical construct of institutional conflict, I find that cross-listing on other stock exchanges and the extent to which firms frame their broader social responsibility issues as ‘sustainability’ or ‘sustainable development’ rather than ‘corporate social responsibility’ has a substantial impact on firm attention to human rights. While this attention is encouraging, firm disclosure of actions taken to mitigate against violations and protect human rights is extremely limited and the strength of domestic institutional pressures has resulted in very little firm action in the face of the extreme and widespread human rights violations being committed in Ukraine by Russia.

The third pillar of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) is often considered the ‘forgotten pillar’,1 especially when compared with the first pillar, where some of the ‘governance gaps’ the State must address in order to comply with its duty to protect under international human rights law are developed with some level of detail. The same happens in relation to the second pillar, which proposes a practical approach for the proactive involvement of companies in the identification and management of the risks their activities and business relationships may produce on human rights.2 However, the third pillar is not necessarily ‘forgotten’, as it is based on one of the core rights of the international human rights regime. In this regard, not only are the various elements and procedures for access to justice developed within each country’s domestic law and within the international legal system, but they have also been subject to detailed studies by the international and regional human rights community.3 However, it is the least proactive pillar of the UN framework on business and human rights, and the one that faces the greatest challenges in terms of making a specific, substantive contribution in light of the vast existence of civil, criminal, administrative and constitutional proceedings in domestic jurisdictions.

As has now been well publicized, there is serious and credible evidence that Uyghur and other minority communities in China are being forced into internment or ‘re-education’ camps,1 with strong links to subsequent forced labour in factories, particularly centred in Xinjiang province.2 The use of forced labour (intimately connected to many international supply chains) as a hallmark feature of the Chinese state’s oppression of its Uyghur peoples requires a ‘business and human rights’ (BHR) lens to responses to the human rights violations in the region.

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.

This article discusses the evolution, current trends, limitations and controversies around the understanding and practice of human rights due diligence (HRDD), a concept developed in the course of the work of United Nations (UN)-mandate holder, John Ruggie, and enshrined in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. While the concept has gathered broad acceptance and a growing number of legislative proposals are seeking to entrench it in law, significant differences of opinion exist among stakeholders as to its nature, objectives and relationship, if any, with legal liability. These differing understandings are at play in a contest to shape future legislation. Some of these carry significant risks for rights-holders, notably the risk of outcome being superseded by process and superficial, compliance-oriented HRDD prevailing in the law or in its interpretation and practice. As legislative efforts continue, the authors warn against the risk of hollow laws which do little to change the status quo or, even worse, inadvertently provide a tool to further impunity for business-related human rights abuses.

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.

Complex multi-actors and multi-level governance structures have emerged in areas that were traditionally exclusively the preserve of the State and treaty-making. The adoption of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP) affirmed a corporate responsibility to respect human rights to be implemented through human rights due diligence (HRDD), ie via management processes. The open-ended character of the UNGP generated the emergence of other soft instruments offering guidance to corporations in structuring HRDD. This contribution conceptualises the UNGP from the perspective of regulation as a principles-based exercise in polycentric governance reliant on regulatory intermediaries for interpretation. It then assesses the role of various sui generis normative instruments in providing interpretation to the UNGP and, how the presence of an additional layer of interpretative material contributes to the institutionalisation of responsible corporate conduct. The analysis of instruments drafted by international, non-governmental and business organisations reveals both a decentralising tension between different intermediaries due to disagreements and divergence concerning the precise extent of corporate human rights responsibilities, as well as attempts to centralise the interpretation of the UNGP. The article concludes by recommending some caution towards the employment of polycentric governance regimes and their lack of centralised interpretive authority in this domain of international law and suggests possible ways to formally establish centralised interpretation.

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.