Corporate Accountability for Human Rights Violations: Role of International Law

Abstract

Multinational corporations have grown to become strong transnational forces who could affect the economies, politics and social setups across borders, in the past decades. As these companies continue to grow into the international scene and even expand their markets in different countries of the world, their history of human rights abuses including violating workers’ rights working conditions, destroying the environment, forced displacements and involvement in conflict areas among others has increased. Such misconduct is common where law is weakly enforced, where de facto governance fails to enforce the law or where the law is compromised by a vested interest such that the alleged perpetrators are not accountable and bound to redress. With the globalization of corporations in a state-based world of enforcement of human rights, the role of international law in closing the gap between such lack of oversight has emerged as being of interest.

This essay searches the development of the international law on the issue of corporate human rights duty in terms of liability. It follows through the history of international law to avoid direct liability on business organizations and points to the early efforts that were aimed at getting the international law to treat states as responsible actors and the ideas that had convinced the international community that the non-state actors were not captured by the international human rights regime. It is in the backdrop of the above that the paper will review the emergence of soft-law mechanisms, including the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), the OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises, and the Tripartite Declaration by the ILO as a transitional mechanism that is currently gaining a foothold to influence corporate conduct. These frameworks are associated with a normative transformation that appreciates that businesses bear obligations that are broader than profit-making, especially those related to securing the rights of laborers, environmental integrity and welfare of communities.

There are major obstacles, even as the world unites over the prospects of corporate social responsibility. Many international instruments are voluntary and hence their enforceability has been restricted since they lack both a judicial or treaty-bound obligation. Accountability efforts are in turn hampered by complex corporate structures, jurisdictional fragmentation and the political economy of foreign investment especially in the Global South. Against this background, the current processes of discussing a legally accessible international contract on business and human rights are a most important step towards more effective control over the corporations in the international law.

There is also an examination in the paper how it is possible to operationalize international legal norms in domestic settings in particular in developing countries like Pakistan. It assesses whether national action plans, institutional reforms and the harmonization of the laws in those jurisdictions with international standards have a potential to contribute to the need to ensure that corporations operating in or through such jurisdictions have to face the violations of rights.

Finally, the paper posits that although significant advances have been achieved in addressing the concept of human rights duties to corporate actors through international law, non-binding nature of international law has remained as a bane to justice to the victims. The international framework that would allow the completion of the accountability gap and place corporate globalization in line with the universal values of human dignity, equity, and justice requires a legally binding mechanism that can be supported by effective implementation at the national level.

Keywords: Corporate, Accountability, Human Rights, Violations, International Law