What kinds of initiatives have been successful to date at moving these issues forward on a global scale?
It’s become clear through this work that there’s no single tool for improving businesses’ performance with respect to human rights. We have to look at the whole spectrum of ways in which corporations are held accountable for human rights. If companies are involved in the worst kinds of human rights abuses — international crimes like genocide or torture — they can be held legally accountable, for example, as countries that already provide for criminal punishment of companies ratify the International Criminal Court statute. Then you can look at national law. Then you have multi-stakeholder initiatives, which have been an important soft law tool. For example, there are initiatives that are usually sector-based, like the Fair Labor Association, which has brought together companies and NGOs to try to improve labor conditions in apparel manufacturing. Then there are voluntary actions by companies. The framework John Ruggie has proposed could affect this whole spectrum. You might see governme
