Business and Human Rights with a Special Reference to Transnational Corporation Viz A Viz Obligations of State: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Industrilisation has changed the scenario of economic development and also influenced the government’s policy decisions. 20th Century had come up with tremendous changes. From this century industrialisation had increased rapidly in the world. Due to this rapid growth big corporate and businesses made the economies of the world connected. This new era has put the economy on a positive note of the development. Because of liberalisation, privatisation, and Globalisation the corporate sector becomes a powerful segment globally. They have crossed the borders and put their legs in different countries. On the global stage corporate sector is becoming more powerful. Also, they have been ascribed as the most prominent source to grow income and wealth. Transnational Corporations play a major role in the economy and have a significant impact at all levels of national, provincials, and local governments. And they have a major share not only on the economy but on the people, land and over the environment where we are living. This has resulted in the devastation of human rights by the corporate sector. There are many instances where corporates have infringed human rights during their business. The severe instances include the Bhopal Gas Leakage case in India, Unocal Case in Myanmar, the Royal Dutch case in Nigeria, the Vedanta Resources PLC case in Zambia, etc. These cases have shown that the corporate sector for its profit-making objective infringes human rights and the State makes liberal policies for them for their economic development. This is even realised by the UN, it finds that these businesses disobeying basic human rights. And as a result in 2011, the UN introduced UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights that has been endorsed unanimously by the "UN Human Rights Council". This is a set of guidelines that operationalise the UN framework and further define the obligations and responsibilities of State and Business enterprises with regards to human rights infringements by businesses. The UN clarifies the duties of State and Business entries towards human rights. They specifically put emphasises TNC's role in respecting human rights. According to which wherever the corporation is working and from where it has been operated it has to respect human rights. These guidelines make out the role and responsibilities of both State and the corporate sector. It has main three pillars on which the whole framework is based on i.e Protect, Respect, and Remedy. The corporation must respect Human Rights is what the main agenda is