BHR is both a multidisciplinary (and sometimes interdisciplinary) academic field drawing from, inter alia, business ethics, law and the social sciences, and a social, economic and political justice movement involving governments and inter-governmental institutions, as well as indigenous peoples, non-governmental organizations, and other civil society actors. BHR advocates seek, at a minimum, to hold businesses accountable for their own direct human rights violations and impacts. This responsibility extends down into the supply chain for human rights violations committed by affiliates, subcontractors, and suppliers. (Arnold and Bowie 2003) Many advocates also would hold business, when it is capable of doing so, responsible for helping to prevent and remedy human rights violations committed by others, including governments, even if the company itself has no direct or indirect connection to such rights violations. Business thus has both a negative duty to itself avoid human rights violations in its own operations and in its supply chain, and positive duties, when possible, to help to protect victims from and remedy violations by others. (Wettstein 2009; Santoro 2010; See generally Shue 1996)
From an academic perspective, the core BHR issues and controversies center around two sets of question: (1) fairness and justice, e.g. on what basis, if any, can business be said to owe moral duties regarding human rights? (Donaldson 1989; Werhane 1985; Wettstein 2009) How extensive are the human rights duties of business in situations where business has no direct or indirect connection to human rights violations by states? (Santoro 2000 and 2009; Wood 2012); and (2) implementation, public policy, and law, e.g. how might voluntary codes of conduct and other self-regulatory mechanisms serve to bring business behavior into greater alignment with their human rights duties? (Campbell 2006) What role should private law, state action, the United Nations or treaties play in promoting business adherence to human rights norms? (Weissbrodt and Kruger 2003; Deva 2004; Williams 2004)
The confluence of two broad historical shifts has shaped the contemporary BHR landscape. The first dates back nearly seven decades to the aftermath of the Nazi atrocities committed during World War II. The fledgling United Nations gave birth to the modern ideal of human rights without establishing an institutional framework for holding member states accountable for human rights violations against their own citizens. Over time, frustration over this state accountability void ineluctably led activists to shift their focus to a more easily (and too often justly) vilified and vulnerable target, i.e. multinational business, as the principal and sometimes exclusive pressure point for preventing and redressing human rights violations. (Spar 1998; Avery 2000) Whether it is apartheid in South Africa, the rights of indigenous people in the Niger Delta, or political oppression and free speech rights in China, global civil society increasingly has shifted the immediate target of pressure to business, even when the fundamental problem is human rights violations by states. A second broad historical trend shaping the current BHR landscape has been the expansion, mostly in legal scholarship, of the range of BHR concerns beyond supply chain labor rights and the extractive industry to a broad array of issues ranging from the environment and access to affordable medicines to economic, cultural and social rights.
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