Business and Human Rights 1300-OG-BHR-KPP

The course introduces participants to the major themes and debates concerning the linkages between business and human rights. Since their corporate emergence, much before the nation-state was born, businesses have had a serious impact on human rights, more adverse than beneficial. Globalisation and the proliferation of multinational corporations has only exacerbated the situation whereby global leaders and human rights advocates are now scrambling to search for the appropriate paradigm within which businesses would not only stop having an adverse impact on human rights, but would, in fact, promote them.
This course will critically examine this business-human rights nexus with a particular focus on case studies from around the world. Several questions such as the human rights obligations of businesses, the manner in which human rights are affected by businesses including during armed conflicts, the specific linkages with the right to environment and labour rights and the ever elusive solution for accountability will be examined. We will also look at the idea of corporate social responsibility within the right to development debate. In the final part, the contemporary and emerging frameworks for ensuring respect and promotion of human rights by businesses will be scrutinised from a critical lens.