This paper presents an alternative epistemic worldview of the corporate responsibility to respect human rights (CR2R) as a norm. It examines how an Afrocentric interpretation of the CR2R norm can contribute to a relational system where corporations promote human rights in African host communities. It uses an African norm — Ubuntu — to reframe and reinterpret Pillar II in Afrocentric terms. It argues that this reframing is important for three reasons. First, Ubuntu reframing increases the CR2R norm’s intelligibility in Africa because it clarifies and contextualizes the term ‘respect’ used in Pillar II. Second, reframing the CR2R norm through Ubuntu fills the ethical gap in the interpretation of the CR2Rnorm. Third, an Ubuntu-inspired interpretation insulates the CR2R norm from some scholars’ critique that the CR2R norm’s scope is narrow because it only encourages MNCs to avoid infringing on the human rights of others without prescribing positive obligations. This paper then examines channels through which Ubuntu can influence the CR2R norm.

Economic inequality, in particular vertical inequality in income and wealth within countries,1 has widened considerably with potentially dramatic economic, political and social consequences.2 Reflecting the need for urgent action on inequality, the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 10 focuses on the reduction of various forms of inequality within and between countries.3 In that context, a number of recent interventions have sought to highlight how business affects inequality,4 recognizing that businesses have a central function in creating and distributing economic value in society. Significantly, two emerging initiatives, the Task Force on Inequality-Related Financial Disclosure (TIFD)5 and the Business Commission to Tackle Inequality (BCTI) by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development,6 seek to notably identify business impacts on inequality and provide approaches for their alleviation.

Across the United States (US), farmworkers and their allies are mobilizing to encourage companies to join a Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) program. On May Day, hundreds marched in support of Migrant Justice’s campaign to convince the Hannaford supermarket chain to join the Milk With Dignity program, a WSR program focused on working conditions in the dairy industry.1 At the most recent annual shareholder meeting of Wendy’s, a US-based fast food franchise, several members of the board of directors faced opposition to renewal of their positions in response to what some shareholders perceived as Wendy’s inadequate disclosure on its efforts to protect workers in its supply chain.2 The opposition forms part of a years-long campaign by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and its allies to convince Wendy’s to join the Fair Food Program, the inaugural WSR program.3

This article intends to explore how the production of collective memory within transitional justice processes could be considered as a feasible avenue to advance the instrumentalization of the Access to Remedy Pillar of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). This account considers that collective memory is a fundamental component of transitional justice as the attainment of both victims reparation and national reconciliation require the emergence of a shared historical narrative that fixes an explanation as to the implications of violence on the trajectory of the affected society. Hence the current Colombian transitional justice project, and particularly certain social dialogue activities conducted by its Truth Commission (hereafter the Commission), are presented as an embryonic and non-exhaustive case study that serves as the starting point of further research on the matter.

Exposure to the marketing of ultra-processed food and beverages has been proven to be detrimental to children’s health. This article explores this issue from a business and human rights perspective, with the purpose of understanding businesses’ responsibilities and states’ duties with respect to the deliberate marketing of ultra-processed products to children. To this end, this article refers to the three pillars of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, as well as to international human rights law. Its analysis looks not only at the normative content of obligations, responsibilities and rights under international law, but also at their implementation and at current challenges within the Latin American context.

Public procurement is a process whereby the public sector buys from private suppliers the goods, services and works it needs to accomplish its functions. It aims to obtain the best ‘value for money’, ‘in a timely, economical and efficient manner’.1 This traditional procurement’s goal was re-defined by scholars and policymakers to give space to non-economic objectives through the so-called sustainable public procurement (SPP).2 SPP pursues economic, environmental and social objectives within the purchasing process.3 Therefore, ‘social’ is one of the three dimensions that makes sustainability possible, and human rights are the backbone of social sustainability.

Latin America has traditionally been both an object of great interest to business and human rights (BHR) scholars and a source of important contributions to the discussion of the most pressing challenges in the field. This article is an attempt at a systematic review of the Latin American contributions to the BHR scholarship to date. It relies on systematic data collection and qualitative analysis of an original dataset of existing literature on BHR in the Latin American context, with the hope of providing a baseline assessment of the state of the field and contributing to building an interdisciplinary and diverse research agenda moving forward. Special focus is paid to how particular regional characteristics shape Latin American contributions. More broadly, the article offers an opportunity to reflect on the place of Global South perspectives in the development of the field.

Drawing on the work of Donaldson and Walsh, this article explains why for-profit companies in industries denominated by intrinsic values such as health, education and justice, have heavier responsibilities when it comes to honouring the human rights reflected in their industry identity. Optimized collective value, the overarching aim of any system of business, is defined in terms of the satisfaction of intrinsic values, a definition that gives special meaning to firms operating in industries themselves defined in terms of intrinsic values. Nor are such companies’ responsibilities to human rights, such as the right to healthcare, conveniently reducible to the ‘enlightened’ pursuit of profit. For example, a pharmaceutical company such as Pfizer or Moderna may be required to make its COVID-19 vaccine more accessible to COVID-19 victims in developing countries at the expense of optimizing profits over the long run. Such companies have a special and mandatory correlative duty to honour the right to healthcare that derives from their corporate constitutional purpose.

Victims of transnational human rights violations caused by multinational corporations (MNCs) are often confronted with substantial impediments to effective remedies. While justice is de facto unattainable in host state courts, due to weak government or the absence of judicial independence, barriers that prevent victims from litigating in home states are no less insurmountable. Transnational litigation in home states has faced jurisdictional challenges. Defendant corporations have argued that home state courts are not the most appropriate forum to hear a case involving foreign torts.1

In this article, we explore what intersectionality, as an analytic tool, can contribute to business and human rights (BHR) scholarship. To date, few BHR scholars have explicitly engaged in intersectional analysis. While gender analysis of BHR issues remains crucial to expose inequality in business activity, we argue that engagement with intersectionality can enrich and support this and other BHR scholarship. Intersectional approaches allow us to move beyond single-axis analysis, contest simplistic representations about gender issues and expose the complexity of human relations. It draws our attention to structures that sustain disadvantage such as racism, colonialism, social and economic marginalization and systematic discrimination. Moreover, intersectionality emphasizes the need to centre the contributions of those who have been marginalized. It can be used to challenge the legitimacy of the state and support subaltern, decolonized or postcolonial, including indigenous, perspectives. Adopting an intersectional approach can help problematize the neoliberal capitalist system and its constructs, in which the BHR normative framework is embedded, calling into question the reification of economic growth and its impact on individuals, communities and the planet. We must, however, remain cautious of attempts to co-opt intersectionality in the service of neoliberalism and remain conscious of our own privilege and discursive practices.

The area of business and human rights (BHR) has a gap in its means to effectively remedy human rights violations. In pursuit of implementing the third pillar of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which focuses on providing an effective remedy to rightsholders affected by corporate human rights violations, it has been proposed to utilize arbitration as a new platform to deal with such violations. The Drafting Team that instigated this initiative has prepared a set of procedural rules for BHR arbitration, called the Hague Rules. The Rules were officially launched on 12 December 2019. These arbitral rules are tailored to the specific needs of settling human rights disputes. In this article, the general idea of BHR arbitration will be analysed and assessed in light of the normative concept of ‘effective’ remedy, using the Hague Rules as a focus point. This article will discuss not only what the Hague Rules would introduce to the general concept of BHR arbitration, but also what limitations might still remain in securing an effective remedy.

Cloud computing underlies many of the most powerful and controversial technologies of our day – from large-scale data processing to face recognition systems – yet the human rights impacts of cloud computing have received little scrutiny. This article explains what cloud computing is, how it works, and what some of its most significant human rights impacts are through three case studies. It offers some initial thoughts on the human rights responsibilities of cloud computing providers under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and concludes by suggesting directions for future research.

It is well documented that the private military and security industry has the capacity to do great gendered harms to both those it encounters and those it employs.1 Significantly, it is also a sector where a variety of human rights-based approaches, instruments and mechanisms have emerged beyond the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs).2 The International Code of Conduct for Private Security Providers (ICoC) addresses gender, and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), and explicitly requires private military and security companies (PMSCs) to integrate a gender perspective in their practices.3 Through an examination of publicly available documents and policies required for PMSCs certified as complying with the ICoC, this piece evaluates whether PMSCs do in fact integrate a gender perspective into their human rights policies and grievance procedures (see Table 1).4 Our study of certified PMSCs demonstrates that despite increased attention to the potential for negative gender impacts in the sector, companies have not developed gender-responsive policies and procedures. It can be said, therefore, that gender is not addressed in any meaningful way by PMSCs. More specifically, we conclude that PMSCs have not yet shown the required holistic understanding of gendered impacts and barriers that is required to respect human rights, and that further efforts are needed in the sector.

In this paper I use South Africa as a reference point to discuss the company as a juristic person and its relationship to natural persons through the concepts of subjectivity and personhood. I do this in an attempt to reveal that granting of juristic personality as ‘the company’ is not a neutral, organic or inevitable product of the law and economy but a construct symbiotically bound to the colonial state. Underlying this juristic personhood is colonial ideology which perpetuates racialized and gendered poverty and inequality as systemic oppression, in order to deliberately facilitate and maintain conditions of domination and exploitation. Rather than taking the conventional business and human rights starting point that accepts the corporate structure without critique, it is argued that by reorienting away from juristic personality as purportedly ‘neutral’ and reframing the construct, the powers of the company might be curtailed, thereby interrupting these continuing colonial logics.

The female sexual and reproductive wellness industry is flourishing, valued at around US$4.5trn globally. Heavily focused on the female reproductive life cycle, products are marketed to women and girls from puberty through to the menopausal years, with medically unsubstantiated claims that can fail to deliver on promises made and leave damaging physical and psychological side-effects. In this article we ask: do the harms caused by the sexual and reproductive wellness industry fall within the boundaries of business and human rights (BHR) scholarship? We establish the landscape of the industry, identify human rights relating to sexual and reproductive healthcare and education, and use BHR literature to make the case that the industry should be placed on the BHR research agenda so that the various tools used in BHR such as the law, corporate governance, and the weight of public consciousness, can be applied to encourage appropriate regulation of this industry.

Many of those who dare to raise their voices in defence of human rights in response to abuses committed in connection to mega-projects are being repressed in the Americas. In this context, Indigenous women leaders face multiple forms of violence, including gender-based violence. The prevailing narrative of ‘progress’ and ‘development’ that accompanies mega-projects in the region often stands in stark contrast to their lived experiences, as Indigenous women human rights defenders frequently face silencing practices from companies, authorities and other groups including paramilitary forces. In this article, I contend that Indigenous women leaders have managed to overcome the silence that is being imposed on them. But what are silencing practices? What does gender-based violence mean in this context? How do Indigenous women leaders overcome silencing practices? The article responds to these questions by focusing on the Wayúu Women’s Force mobilization in Colombia and drawing on the emerging ‘braided action’ theoretical framework.

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.

This paper analyses whether the implementation of business and human rights (BHR) frameworks in Colombia properly responds to the challenges posed by informal mining and gender-based violence and discrimination in the context of conflict and peacebuilding. The mining sector has been considered key in Colombia to promote economic growth, but it is also characterized by significant informality. Informal mining in Colombia has been linked to gender-based violence and discrimination. We contend that while informality has been identified as a substantial hurdle to the realization of human rights, BHR frameworks still fall short in addressing this aspect of business. By examining the specific measures Colombia has devised to implement BHR, including two National Action Plans on BHR, we demonstrate the urgency of addressing informal economies in BHR and to continue developing particular insights to properly protect, respect and remedy the human rights wrongs women experience in the context of informal mining.

Corporate-led women’s empowerment initiatives appear, in their proactiveness, to be a welcome addition to a range of measures addressing adverse human rights impacts by business. This article questions the claim that these projects significantly advance women’s rights. Instead, they can be understood as a manifestation of what Catherine Rottenberg terms ‘neoliberal feminism’ with women at risk of being transformed into ‘gender capital’ for business gain. This article rejects the claim that empowerment can only be delivered by encouraging women into market-based work. Instead, it is argued that the corporate responsibility to respect the human rights of women can better be supported by reorienting business away from its preoccupation with delivering value for shareholders, towards an approach that values women’s unpaid socially reproductive labour.

The 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza in Bangladesh brought global visibility to the human rights abuses experienced by women workers in the garment sector. As the spotlight on this incident dims, the need to hold the fashion sector accountable remains. In this article, we suggest that greater accountability could be achieved through the application of a human rights-informed understanding of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to promote gender justice in the sector. By drawing on international women’s rights law and sustainable fashion, we demonstrate how sustainability and gender justice are intimately connected, and illustrate what role the SDGs can play in promoting sustainable outcomes that are gender-just. The article unpacks concepts such as sustainability, the circular economy, social responsibility, and ethical fashion, and places the experiences of women workers within this context. Its principal contribution is a set of six requirements to ensure a gender perspective to the fashion industry’s role in implementing the SDGs.