Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publication Date
2015
ISSN
0272-5037
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Language
en-US
Abstract
Additional actors are being asked to assume responsibility for protecting human rights and preventing violations. I argue that it is appropriate and important to expand the human rights paradigm into other arenas, including corporate social responsibility. Expanding the array of actors understood to have a responsibility to respect human rights could serve to aid an under-resourced and overburdened human rights system to advance the rights protections that it was created to promote. While human rights activists have traditionally turned to intergovernmental institutions and state governments to protect rights and to remedy violations, the recent trend is to expand our understanding of the range of actors responsible for impacting the enjoyment of human rights. Chief among the actors attracting additional attention are transnational business enterprises. Activists allege that corporations are complicit in human rights violations in a range of contexts and must be held accountable. For example, Nestle was alleged to have aided and abetted child slavery in the Ivory Coast.' Yahoo! was alleged to have been complicit in the imprisonment of political dissidents in China.2 Chevron and Total were accused of propping up a military junta in Burma.
Litigation against corporations for alleged complicity in human rights violation has stalled in some jurisdictions. For example, the Supreme Court of the United States has held that in most instances a presumption against extraterritoriality will preclude recognition of causes of action for violations of the law of nations that occur within the territory of other sovereign states. 4 Nevertheless, demands for remedy and accountability have only accelerated.
Recommended Citation
Erika George,
Expanding the Array of Accountable Actors: Human Rights and Corporate Social Responsibility
,
in
109
American Society of International Law Proceedings
246
(2015).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/3839
