Business and Human Rights: The Evolving International Agenda

In: American journal of international law: AJIL, Volume 101, Issue 4, p. 819-840

Abstract

The state-based system of global governance has struggled for more than
a generation to adjust to the expanding reach and growing influence of
transnational corporations. The United Nations first attempted to establish
binding international rules to govern the activities of transnationals in
the 1970s. That endeavor was initiated by developing countries as part of a
broader regulatory program with redistributive aims known as the New
International Economic Order. Human rights did not feature in this
initiative. The Soviet bloc supported it while most industrialized countries
were opposed. Negotiations ground to a halt after more than a decade, though
they were not formally abandoned until 1992.