Human Rights, Economic Globalization and Multinational Corporations

Essay from the year 2013 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Globalization, Political Economics, grade: 1,0, , language: English, abstract: The introduction of the International Bill of Human Rights and subsequent treaties marked a radical change in the previous belief that only sovereign countries themselves are responsible for enforcing human rights within their borders. However, today we still do not see much change in the international human rights environment. The UN convention on genocide did by no means prevent the next genocides, as for example in Rwanda, from occurring and human rights violations a observable all over the world, be it in the form of child labor in China or sex slavery in the US. In light of a rapidly changing global landscape due to the effects of globalization and leading to increasingly interconnected nations, an additional challenge as well as opportunity is posed to human rights enforcement. This paper argues that MNC's have a responsibility to enforce, within their boundaries, human rights more stringently and national and international legislation should reflect these responsibilities. Furthermore this paper argues that the state, while remaining the strongest actor in international relations in general, is increasingly losing bargaining power over human rights concerns thus shifting the human rights focus onto non-state actors. Firstly this paper will analyze the changing global landscape as well as business environment in terms of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) concerning human rights. Building on the first analyzes this paper will argue for a shift in human rights enforcement from state to non-state actors, in particular to MNC's. Thereby this paper will argue that MNC's responsibilities towards compliance to human rights derives firstly, from an international human rights regime perspective and secondly from a moral perspective. Thirdly this paper will analyze how and if this shift in enforcement is feasible by particularly looking at the influence of the civil society on business behavior, as well as legislative changes to national law and international human rights law. Finally, this paper will conclude that, while MNC's have a moral responsibility to enforce human rights more stringently, they lack the legal pressure to do so. Therefore new legislative changes need to be introduced to account for the continued emergence of subnational and transnational networks and the increased influence and spread of non-state actors.