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

Abstract

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.

The impact of the UK's Modern Slavery Act (2015) on the disclosure of FTSE 100 companies

“…Because of this, governments have attempted to strengthen human rights risks transparency by developing regulations such as the UKs 2005 Modern Slavery Act, LeBaron & Rühmkorf (2017) and Australia's 2018 Modern Slavery Act (Christ et al, 2019;Islam et al, 2017). Human rights of community: As far as the human rights of the community are concerned, multinational companies have been encountering critics regarding their adverse impacts on indigenous people (Wolfsteller & Li, 2022). The first significant concern refers to environmental damage by corporations, which affects the environment and society of the indigenous people (Černič, 2008).…”