Business and Human Rights

'Business and Human Rights' is one of the latest, most promising and yet under-researched novelties in the landscape of transnational global governance. On 16 June 2011, the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council unanimously endorsed the ‘Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights’, thus establishing a comprehensive framework based on (1) the state duty to protect human rights from corporate abuses and (2) the corporate responsibility to respect human rights. The Guiding Principles have swiftly become an authoritative focal point at the national, regional and international level, and have added to a flourishing number of transnational initiatives aimed at enhancing firms’ human rights practices. Unfortunately, the disciplines of Political Science and International Relations (IR) have not yet fully and rigorously assessed these recent developments. This is most surprising given the efforts, as UN Special Representative, by one of the most prominent IR scholars, John Ruggie. The purpose of this section is to rectify this situation by providing an opportunity for an emergent community of political researchers on business and human rights to meet, present their work and start a promising network. The section will show that political theories and methods can be extremely useful in complementing existing research (mainly from international law and business ethics perspectives). In particular, political researchers are best placed to address important normative and empirical questions, including, but not confined to: Do corporations have moral duties with regard to human rights? If so, how can one develop criteria to assign them moral, political and legal responsibility? Is “business and human rights” really an emancipatory programme or a mere marketing exercise? Why do some corporations join voluntary initiatives and others do not? What is the impact of “naming and shaming” corporations? Why have most states objected to the adoption of stronger regulatory standards?