Effects and Limits of the UN Guiding Principles

In 2011, the UN Human Rights Council unanimously adopted the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP), which had been elaborated for more than five years in a global multi-stakeholder process by John Ruggie in his function as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Business and Human Rights. The UNGP rest on three pillars: I. The state duty to protect asks from governments to take regulatory measures and other policies to foster business respect for human rights. 2. The corporate responsibility to respect human rights asks from businesses to avoid infringing on the human rights of others through human rights due diligence. 3. Access to remedy asks from states as well as businesses to ensure that when abuses occur those affected have access to remedies. While the first pillar of the UNGP proposes measures to strengthen the state duty to protect in light of economic globalization, the second pillar, the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, emphasizes a distinct responsibility of businesses for human rights. Thus from a governance perspective, the UNGP propose a mix of binding regulation by states and private self-regulation by business often in cooperation with non-governmental organizations. This soft law instrument can be perceived as a reaction to economic globalization and corresponding transnationalization processes. The paper discusses the UNGP as being part of an overall tendency of the privatization of the protection of human rights and examines its effects on the traditional human rights regime.