Human Rights and Private Responsibility

Abstract

Processes of globalization, privatization and global governance led to great transformations in global relations. The state, once the only relevant actor in terms of international relations and international law, is being accompanied and partially substituted by transnational non-state actors. Transnational non-state actors – including actors as heterogeneous as business enterprises, non-governmental organizations, religious associations, unions or criminal networks – increasingly gain agency, power, authority and legitimacy, thus turning the international sphere into a transnational sphere. These processes challenge traditional state-centered perspectives of Political Theory and International Relations alike, striving for an International Political Theory that brings these perspectives and transformations together. Human rights are one of the central areas that are deeply challenged by globalization, privatization and global governance. This is because in the traditional human rights system, states are responsible for human rights: States have the obligation to respect, protect and fulfill human rights, and states have to protect against human rights abuse within their jurisdiction/territory by third parties. Non-state actors cannot be directly held accountable for human rights abuse unless in exceptional cases of gross violations (e.g. genocide and crimes against humanity). The rise of transnational non-state actors, their agency and authority provide for challenges and gaps in the protection and fulfillment of human rights. Gaps appear in the expansion of rights for transnational non-state actors without corresponding duties, and in the transnationalization of actors, processes and actions that cannot be confined to a specific state’s jurisdiction. Additionally, current gaps in the implementation and enforcement of human rights in different states allow a jurisdiction shopping in which non-state actors actively search for and use human rights gaps. This indicates a challenge not only for the state-centered character of human rights, but also for the ‘great dichotomy’ (Bobbio) between the public and the private sphere in which human rights violations have to be made public or at least publicized in order to count as such: violations of human rights according to international law. It poses the question of if and how transnational non-state actors can be held responsible for human rights. Or, to put it more pointedly: Does the privatization of agency and authority need to be accompanied by a privatization of the responsibility for human rights? This question faces several difficulties, starting with the broad definition of transnational non-state actors which may have nothing else in common other than acting transnationally and not being a state. It goes on with the question, if human rights responsibility should be bound to an actor’s legitimacy, authority, power, agency, resources, connection to the public sphere or recognition as a subject of international law. Finally, there is the danger of relieving the state from its human rights responsibility and of transferring this responsibility into a non-transparent, arbitrary private sphere. The papers in this panel approach these questions by empirically and theoretically asking for the conditions, chances and limits of a privatization of human rights responsibility and its meaning for the human rights system.

Title	Details
Effects and Limits of the UN Guiding Principles	View Paper Details
Legal Status, Political Legitimacy, and Compliance with the ‘Views’ of Human Rights Treaty Bodies	View Paper Details
Searching for Accountability of the Private Sector for Trafficking in Human Beings and Access to Justice for Trafficked Persons in the European Context	View Paper Details
Human Rights as an Element of Corporate Governance: International Politics and a Threefold Critique	View Paper Details