For the last some decades, corporations are growing both in quantity and quality. Their exponential development has impacted political, economic and social affairs throughout the world even though the main accountability for the protection of international human rights standards is still in the domination of sovereign entities. However, in recent days, there is a growing concern that corporations must possess some level of liability in relation to Human Rights.
For that reason, the emerged concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) rationalizes their duties on social welfare and environment related issues. Nonetheless, their influence on human rights shall be analyzed in how corporations administer their human capital where their production is relocated.
Of course, human management systems distress corporate performance through the administration of employee behaviors. As a result, global development goals, for instance, health improvements and poverty alleviations, can be related to a positive management of workers as well as workers of suppliers in the supply chain process.
In fact, human rights are relevant to the social, economic and environmental issues of basic corporate activity. For instance, employment rights demanding corporations to pay fair salary that influence the macro economicsituation. Human rights such as the right to non-discrimination are pertinent to socialrights as well. Hence, on the other hand, environmentalrelated responsibilities of corporate activities might affect a variety of human rights. As a result, while the main responsibility for the assurance of human rights standards lies with sovereign entities, there is a rising recognition that corporations shall have an important position to take part in.
Under such important position, hundreds of corporations throughout the world have publicly dedicated to uphold different human rights standards. This exemplify the growing acceptance of the requisite for corporate entities to protect human right vis-à-vis protecting the interests of employees, shareholders as well as the community and customers in general. In line with this, some of global standards in relation to human rights vs. corporations includes but not limited to
- The UN Global Compact
- The UN Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises
- The Global Reporting Initiative
- Different ILO Tripartite Declarations, and
- OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises
Corporations shall play a significant role in respecting human rights!
