Business and Human Rights in Europe 2011–2021: A Decade in Review
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 February 2022
Summary
ABSTRACT
Business-related human rights abuses remain endemic in Europe and globally. European actors have implemented measures to address business-related human rights abuses both prior and subsequent to the United Nations (UN) 2011 Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, a central reference point of the emerging field of business and human rights. This contribution reviews steps taken in Europe towards preventing and redressing business-related human rights abuses in the European Union (EU, the Union), Council of Europe and nationally. Its analysis discloses a decade of conceptual change, legislative and policy innovations that encompass some concrete advances in the regulation of specific value chains, technologies and forms of abuse. It shows a downwards cascade from international to regional norms, but also endogenous and regionally-specific European initiatives, and the lack of uniform or linear transposition of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) across European states, sectors and institutions. It also demonstrates the complex goals and diverse regulatory approaches applied to secure respect for human rights in Europe's market sphere, and their reliance on the capacities and involvement of a multiplicity of public, private, local and transnational actors. Highlighting challenges to the normative, doctrinal and institutional coherence of human rights law and policy attendant on the transmission of human rights norms and standards into the market sphere, it identifies conflicts and dilemmas for human rights scholars, practitioners and policy-makers. Ten observations are advanced on a decade of business and human rights in Europe relating to: the extension of human rights’ normative horizon; concomitant doctrinal challenges; the role of hard and softlaw; impacts of the business and human rights field for Europe's regional human rights systems; divergencies between intra-EU and ‘global’ business and human rights agendas; the financialisation of business and human rights accountability; remediation of business-related violations and abuses; implications for a UN business and human rights treaty; and business and human rights knowledge and research.
INTRODUCTION
In 2021, rights-holders in Europe experience business-related human rights abuses, from forced labour, unsafe working conditions, denials of collective and individual labour rights and discrimination, to environmental pollution, breaches of privacy, freedom of expression and harassment via the Internet.
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- European Yearbook on Human Rights 2021 , pp. 407 - 448Publisher: IntersentiaPrint publication year: 2021