BHRJ Blog
Welcome to the blog of the Business and Human Rights Journal, an authoritative platform for scholarly debate on all issues concerning the intersection of business and human rights in an open, critical and interdisciplinary manner.
Latest posts:
- Challenges for Japan’s Regulatory Approaches for Business and Human Rights
- Business Responsibility Reporting in India – Can it go Beyond the Global North Gaze?
- The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act: An Assessment Of Enforcement Efforts
- The United States 2024 National Action Plan on Responsible Business Conduct
- Regulatory Initiatives on Business and Human Rights in Brazil – From the Domestic to the International and Back?
Challenges for Japan’s Regulatory Approaches for Business and Human Rights
Since their 2011 adoption, the UN Guiding Principles on BHR (UNGPs) have had little impact on corporate behavior in Japan. Japanese business actors have had little awareness or interest in BHR issues both in Japan and in the countries where they operate. Moreover, the Japanese government has not actively promoted human rights in general. Noting…
Business Responsibility Reporting in India – Can it go Beyond the Global North Gaze?
In the Indian context, the last decade has seen significant leaps in the business and human rights domain. Despite integration into global supply chains of MNCs who wield significant power and influence within government policy circles, local businesses – except a few, used to ignore the concept of responsible business practices as a Western imposition…
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act: An Assessment Of Enforcement Efforts
The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of northwest China is populated primarily by ethnic and religious minorities including Muslim Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz. Sharing borders with eight other nations and rich in natural resources, the XUAR is strategically and economically significant for China as part of the country’s “Belt and Road” infrastructure initiative. Documented widespread and systematic human rights abuses committed…
The United States 2024 National Action Plan on Responsible Business Conduct
National Action Plans (NAPs) signal a government’s commitment to implementing the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). The UNGPs do not explicitly refer to NAPs, although Principle 8 does call on States to pursue “policy coherence” among government agencies and departments to fulfill existing obligations to respect, protect, and fulfill human rights. In turn, the…
Regulatory Initiatives on Business and Human Rights in Brazil – From the Domestic to the International and Back?
Brazil, like many countries in the Global South, has long witnessed the perversities of corporate human rights violations, such as the emblematic Mariana (2015) and Brumadinho (2019) dam disasters, the expansion of agribusiness frontiers resulting in the expulsion of traditional peoples from their land, and the record inclusion of employers in the “Dirty List of Slave…
Business And Human Rights In Africa in The Era of The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA)
Africa has played an important role in advancing the business and human rights agenda. For many decades, this role was rather ‘passive’ and consisted mainly of witnessing complex human rights and environmental violations resulting from business activities on its territory and to provide courts and tribunals, located outside Africa (Canada, France, United Kingdom, Netherlands, United States of America etc.), with…
BHR Regulations in South Korea: Achievements and Limitations
The business and human rights (BHR) movement is essentially a movement to regulate transnational corporations (TNCs) in relation to human rights abuses in developing countries that are linked to the business activities of TNCs based in developed countries. Understandably, developed regions like Europe are leading the BHR movement. However, for the movement to be effective, it must…
The Chinese Path for Business and Human Rights
Setting the Stage: Universal Values With National and Ideological Characteristics For a long time some in the international human rights community appeared to share two core assumptions about the human rights project generally, and more specifically to its application in the context of human rights abuses in economic activity. The first was that human rights…
BHR Developments in Canada: Targeting Low Hanging Fruit
As the EU celebrates the adoption of the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), advancements in the realm of business and human rights in Canada appear more restrained. Canada’s most recent notable development in this area is the enactment of the Fighting Against Forced Labour and Child Labour in Supply Chains Act, colloquially known as Canada’s…
Business and Human Rights in the Western Balkans
This post examines the situation of Business and human rights in Western Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia) through the implementation of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. So far, little attention has been paid to business and human rights in the Western Balkans. The…
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