公司人权义务的国际规制：内容、问题与发展 —以《跨国公司和其他工商企业在人权方面的责任准则》为核心

Abstract

In the traditional theory of international law, corporation was private actor, which should be only regulated by domestic law, having nothing to do with the international law, while the human rights protection should be the issue of the country, involving the international law. Therefore, there exists no intersection between corporation and human rights protection. However, in recent decades, a series of human rights violations have been caused by the corporations, and the human rights protection calls for the joint efforts of the world. Especially in the era of globalization of economy, the issue of human rights has been more sensitive, difficult and complex, and corporation can no longer escape the responsibility of human rights protection as it is not the subject in the international law. The Norms on the Responsibility of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights was the first international legal document that comprehensively and systematically described the corporation’s human rights protection, which involved human rights protection, humanitarian, international labor protection, environmental protection, and the consumers’ rights and interests protection, Because of the Norms’ universality of the scope, prevalence of the content, and the directness and mandatory of the validity, it was considered as one of the notable landmarks on the road of the corporation’s responsibility for human rights violation. But due to the Norms’ vague expression of the “international corporations”, “company conspiracy”, and “scope of the activity and influence”, and wide regulating object, undeveloped self-regulation of the corporation’s human rights obligation, ambiguous jurisdiction of the courts and other procedural matters, etc. it was failed to pass in the final vote when submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. The Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework has been passed in 2011, but with the significance of the Norms in the aspect of international regulation of the corporation’s human rights, it would continue having great effects on theoretical and practical study within a long period of time. Throughout the international development of the corporate social responsibility, it is not difficult to see that the international regulation of the corporation’s human rights obligations will apply itself to further clarify the scope of the “international corporations”, consult the classification of the “direct accomplice”, “indirect accomplice” and “silent accomplice” of the “company conspiracy” that suggested by the academic field, and interpret the expression of the “scope of the activity and influence”. Meanwhile, the corporation’s human rights obligations will regard the World Trade Organization as a main platform from indirect, negative regulation to direct and active regulation, set legal remedies on the basis of the original obligations, and protect the human rights at the international and domestic levels.