Conceptualizing Corporate Accountability in International Law: Models for a Business and Human Rights Treaty

Bernaz, Nadia

doi:10.1007/s12142-020-00606-w

Cited by 18 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Pointing out the limits of the UNGPs’ do-no-harm approach, they propose more comprehensive and ambitious conceptions of human rights accountability which would encourage the transformation of the business models of conventional corporations and subject corporate sovereignty to external, democratic control (Gregg 2021 ). They explore different models of corporate human rights accountability and corresponding governance instruments to be implemented in a future binding treaty and develop an analytical framework for their critical assessment (Bernaz 2021 ).…”

Section: Accountability Governance Effectiveness: Exploring the Diffu...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The articles in this special issue address these gaps. They do so by highlighting the fundamental struggles in the business and human rights field over the power to define corporate human rights accountability and its adequate implementation, as well as over the legitimacy of the adequate mode of governance (Hamm 2022 ; Bernaz 2021 ). While the UNGPs’ proponents point to their broad diffusion and superior legitimacy derived from an inclusive multi-stakeholder consultation process, advocates of a binding international treaty call for legally enforceable standards and argue that legitimacy in international law cannot be generated through private governance mechanisms but can only be derived from negotiations between (democratically elected) governments (Hamm 2022 ).…”

Section: Accountability Governance Effectiveness: Exploring the Diffu...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The final two articles provide original analyses of corporate accountability, legitimacy, and governance aspects of a future binding treaty on business and human rights. In the contribution “Conceptualizing corporate accountability in international law: Models for a business and human rights treaty,” Nadia Bernaz ( 2021 ) 24 seeks to bring conceptual clarity and normative ambition both to the treaty negotiations and to human rights scholarship about the substance of corporate human rights accountability. Bernaz conceptualizes corporate accountability in international law and develops an analytical framework which helps assess different conceptions in the debate.…”

Section: Outline Of the Special Issuementioning

confidence: 99%

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Business and Human Rights Regulation After the UN Guiding Principles: Accountability, Governance, Effectiveness

Wolfsteller

2022

Hum Rights Rev

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Since the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) were adopted by the UN Human Rights Council in 2011, they have diffused into policy frameworks, laws, and regulations across the globe. This special issue seeks to advance the interdisciplinary field of human rights research by examining key elements of the emerging transnational regime for the regulation of business and human rights. In seven original contributions, scholars from political science, law, accounting, and philosophy critically reflect on the theoretical foundations of the UNGPs, they analyze the effectiveness of implementation mechanisms and current regulatory practice, and they advance proposals for the future development of the business and human rights regime. In this introduction, we prepare the ground for these analyses, proceeding in three steps. Firstly, we argue that the adoption of the UNGPs has triggered a norm cascade which requires a distinctive, empirically oriented research agenda focusing on the scope, governance, and effectiveness of corporate human rights accountability norms and instruments. Secondly, we explain how the articles in this special issue contribute to that research agenda by addressing these themes. Thirdly, we provide an overview of the individual contributions and point out avenues for future research.

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Section: Accountability Governance Effectiveness: Exploring the Diffu...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Accountability Governance Effectiveness: Exploring the Diffu...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Outline Of the Special Issuementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Business and Human Rights Regulation After the UN Guiding Principles: Accountability, Governance, Effectiveness

Wolfsteller

2022

Hum Rights Rev

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“…This gap reflects a broader systemic lack of transnational accountability mechanisms for the corporate sector. 165 Deeper engagement with human rights-based benchmarks and meaning of the Standards could make them more useful to small and medium-sized enterprises outside of the Global North. For the most part, these companies are not represented among the list of Supporters and have not yet participated in transnational knowledge production regarding the Standards.…”

Section: Priorities For Advancing a Rights-based Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reclaiming the Human Rights Foundations of the UN Standards of Conduct for Business on Tackling Discrimination against LGBTI People

Lyons

Christiancy

2022

Bus. and hum. rights j.

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The business and human rights field and the international LGBTI human rights agenda have evolved almost entirely separately. The United Nations ‘Standards of Conduct for Business on Tackling Discrimination against LGBTI People’ (2017) is the primary effort to bridge this gap. Although drafted in a way that strongly aligns with the second pillar of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights on corporate responsibility, the dissemination of the Standards has mainly been untethered from the human rights framework and system. This article identifies the need to reassert the human rights foundations of the Standards and leverage their existing momentum to set out a more robust research and policy agenda for meaningfully accounting for sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics in business and human rights frameworks. To that end, the article sets out priority areas for greater attention from researchers, decision-makers and advocates.

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“…173 The adoption of the Protocol on Amendments to the Protocol on the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights (Malabo Protocol) made certain that this subject took concrete form in international discourse. 174 Hence, some contend that the Malabo Protocol will help Africa 'to respond more effectively to challenges posed by corporations'. 175 The Malabo Protocol provides for a regional framework for the criminal prosecution of business entities that commit egregious human rights violations.…”

Section: Business Meets Human Rightsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The African human rights system as 'norm leader': Three case studies

Okafor

Dzah

2021

Afr. hum. rights law j.

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Africa (including its human rights system) is rarely imagined or considered an originator, agent and purveyor of ideas, including in the human rights sphere. On this occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the adoption of the 1981 African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights which founded the African human rights system, it is only fitting that its contributions or otherwise to global human rights praxis, over these four decades, be examined from this perspective. Utilising the theory of the norm life cycle, developed by scholars of international relations who work within 'strategic social constructivism', this article examines how the African human rights system has, or has not, functioned as a 'norm leader' with regard to certain important and increasingly widely-accepted human rights standards. To that extent, the article examines (as examples) certain human rights norms first elaborated and made into legally-binding forms in the African Charter, widely circulated and having achieved a considerable level of global dispersal and adoption, in part, as a result of the work of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights and the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights. Focusing on three important norms (the right to self-determination, the right to development and the right to the environment) and based on a study of academic and other literature, treaties or instruments, case law and records of international negotiations, the article attempts to respond systematically to this overarching question. The article argues that although the African human rights system clearly is not a state, the critical but globally under-appreciated roles it has played regarding the globalised socialisation of certain human rights ideas fits within, and helps in extending, social constructivist human rights theory and praxis. The article concludes with a reflection on some key limitations that are observable as to how far the system has been able to travel in the direction of norm leadership in human rights law.

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Conceptualizing Corporate Accountability in International Law: Models for a Business and Human Rights Treaty

Cited by 18 publications

References 37 publications

Business and Human Rights Regulation After the UN Guiding Principles: Accountability, Governance, Effectiveness

Business and Human Rights Regulation After the UN Guiding Principles: Accountability, Governance, Effectiveness

Reclaiming the Human Rights Foundations of the UN Standards of Conduct for Business on Tackling Discrimination against LGBTI People

The African human rights system as 'norm leader': Three case studies

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