Introduction
During the past few decades, with limited success, the United Nations Secretariat, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, UN human rights treaty committees, activists, non-governmental agencies, and foundations have encouraged national governments to protect and promote human rights. However, it has become clear that national governments no longer have the resources to fund the realization of economic rights, such as the right to housing, the right to education, the right to work, the right to social security, the right to a clean and safe environment, and the right to health. As a result, the UN human rights system and its supporters are now expecting transnational corporations to "respect" human rights, which, depending on one's perspective, can mean anything from obeying national laws protecting the civil and political rights of citizens to the limitless funding of a broad range of ambiguous economic, social, and cultural rights. This section covers the UN's growing "business and human rights" agenda, which works in the context of a complex adaptive matrix of human rights governance networks.
BHR
In 2011, the United Nations Human Rights Council unanimously endorsed the Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights, developed by Harvard professor John Ruggie as a framework for holding transnational corporations accountable for respecting human rights. Since their adoption, the Guiding Principles have spurred a flurry of action by governments and international organizations on business and human rights issues, including the creation of a Working Group on these issues by the Human Rights Council and the development of “National Action Plans” by several countries. Although the Guiding Principles were adopted as an alternative to a binding international treaty on business and human rights, a majority of members of the UN Human Rights Council and human rights activists continue to press for such a treaty. This focus area monitors the promotion of the Guiding Principles, which seek to hold corporations accountable for fulfilling ambiguous economic, social, and cultural rights, and the ongoing debate over the adoption of a binding treaty on business and human rights.
