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Abstract:

‘Global Human Rights Governance’ is a puzzling area of global governance that views a growing role for business enterprises. Business enterprises constitute powerful forces capable of not only infringing, but also contributing to the realization of a broad spectrum of human rights. Calls for business enterprises to assume governance responsibilities have amounted to a proliferation of voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) regulatory schemes and norms that exercise considerable normative force. Positivist notions of the law and international relations theory stand challenged as scholars seek to conceptualize these new governance trends that are not directly tied to the expression of the will of sovereign States. Whilst often used as a conceptual reference, global governance in itself is a contested concept. Within the particular field of human rights the term remains largely unexplored. This paper analyses the concept of global human rights governance, notably from a legal perspective, taking global business and human rights governance and corporate social responsibility as the focus of analysis. The argument holds that new conceptual anchors are warranted to facilitate the analysis of global business and human rights governance from a legal perspective and for the law to assume a relevant role in it. It (i) provides a brief insight into the conventional legal and political perspectives on human rights governance and the conceptual challenges faced, (ii) presents the concept of CSR and global CSR schemes as instances of global business and human rights governance, and (iii) introduces legal theory as the point of departure for the development of legal concepts to analyze and leverage the responsibilities and regulatory initiatives of business enterprises in a global human rights context.