As of October 2018, 21 states have adopted National Action Plans on Business and Human Rights (NAPs), with several more in different phases of development. This is an important political step to raise awareness of the importance of intragovernmental policy coherence and of the need to move forward to prevent human rights abuses linked to business activity. However, despite the global intergovernmental support to such policy strategies, the actual effectiveness of NAPs needs to be called into question: do they represent progress, or are they a mirage to block possible avenues of development? Currently existing NAPs have done little (yet) to ensure more effective protection in key policy areas, including trade and investment, state-owned enterprises, and particularly in relation to legislative developments and access to remedy. This contribution seeks to analyse the merits of developing NAPs, the importance of ensuring they become only the very first step towards a more effective protection of human rights, and to question whether their importance needs to be adjusted to what they really are: policy tools with limited effects and with a politically linked time frame.

Businesses have increasingly recognized their responsibility to respect human rights in their operations. This has been in part guided by international initiatives, such as the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, as well as guidance and regulations from states. Although these measures recognize risks associated with conflict-affected areas, contexts of occupation present unique concerns. These issues become even more complex when states send mixed messages to businesses. This is most evident when examining the discourse on and regulation of business operations linked to Israel’s prolonged occupation of Palestinian territory, especially those with operations and relationships related to ‘security’. This article seeks to highlight the frequent disregard of human rights responsibilities and obligations by states and businesses related to the occupied Palestinian territory and population, which has created a gap in accountability that civil society has attempted to address.

This article examines the involvement of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) in both shaping and implementing the European Agenda on Migration (European Agenda), launched by the European Union in May 2015. The migration policies which have since been adopted have increasingly enabled the outsourcing to private security contractors of various border control operations, including those related to forced returns, administrative detention and security services for the Italian and Greek ‘hotspots’. The article argues that PMSCs frame, shape and entrench militarized responses in the European Agenda. It also contends that the current context of the European refugee ‘crisis’ meets the conditions of a high-risk context, as understood within the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). This re-definition of the refugee ‘crisis’ as a high-risk context, in turn, enables the identification of heightened human rights obligations of home states and responsibilities of companies when implementing the UNGPs.

Following the 2011 endorsement of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), states have begun to implement National Action Plans (NAPs) to operationalize the UNGPs. Using a case study approach and applying a conceptual framework for polycentric governance, this article aims to provide an early assessment of the effectiveness of NAPs adopted by the United Kingdom and the United States to combat one of the worst human rights abuses in global supply chains: modern slavery. This study demonstrates that both NAPs contain elements addressing the governance gaps surrounding modern slavery, such as enacting new laws, adapting existing regulations, strengthening multi-stakeholder mechanisms for business accountability, and promoting innovation. However, it is argued that the NAPs themselves were not the catalysts for the majority of these measures. This article concludes that states should optimize the five characteristics of polycentric governance outlined in this study to improve the relevance and effectiveness of NAPs as drivers of change.

The key purpose of this article is to critically assess the extent to which auditing and certification to quality assurance and risk management standards containing human rights-related requirements are an adequate and effective means of ensuring that private security companies internalize their responsibility to respect human rights. Based on participant observation, interviews and publicly accessible data, it concludes that in the absence of the adoption of specific assurance measures in the certification and oversight processes, the constructivist ‘tipping point’ resulting in the internalization of the corporate responsibility to respect may not be attained when there is inadequate norm compliance or, worse yet, norm regression.

In 2017, France established a due diligence statutory obligation for French parent companies to monitor extraterritorial human rights and environmental abuses committed by their off-shore affiliates. Switzerland is also considering adopting a similar law for Swiss parent companies. These obligations are comparable to the duty of care that, according to recent case law, British parent companies owe towards their subsidiaries’ neighbours. This article compares and contrasts the newly introduced French due diligence statutory obligation, the UK precedents, and two alternative Swiss legislative proposals on the due diligence and duty of care of parent companies.

How do migrant employees understand and articulate human rights in the British hospitality sector? This article contributes to the discussion on the translation of human rights responsibility in business by introducing ‘rights-talk’ as an analytical lens to explore and theorize about employees’ situated understanding and uses of human rights as a language and a moral evaluative frame. The analysis highlights the importance of (in)equality in employees’ everyday experience of rights, and points to several disincentives for them to engage with and in rights-talk including social and organizational disrespect, managerial disregard for employees’ claims, and their largely connotative use of human rights language. These insights advance theorizing and open research avenues on the significance of human rights in organizations from a bottom-up perspective, while the inquiry’s micro-level focus enriches business and human rights’ methodological toolbox. The findings are also significant for business human rights responsibility in contexts of heightened anti-immigration discourse and policies.

The private security industry in Latin America has been associated with human rights abuses, particularly in the context of extractive operations. Most private security guards in the region are poorly trained and do not undergo adequate vetting. These factors combined with serious deficiencies in the rule of law across the region too often enable private security companies to effectively operate outside state control and engage in human rights abusive practices. This article argues that adoption of the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Providers (ICoC) by Latin American private security companies and states, coupled with civil society engagement with ICoC’s Association, may help reduce negative human rights impacts arising out of private security services within the extractive industry.

The history of indigenous peoples from across the globe is marked by constant aggression, persecution and conflict. In these times, they are being obliged to confront the consequences of economic interests in their ancestral lands and natural resources, which often take the form of extractive projects conducted by corporate actors with the permission of governments. These abusive practices have led to a number of social, legal and political disputes, many of which have resulted in violence. All of this reveals that indigenous rights cases cannot be omitted in the study of the interrelation between business, human rights and security, since these three elements are present in many of them. In particular, the case law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights needs to be closely examined, as it is considered to be the regional system of human rights protection that has played the most prominent role in delimitating indigenous property rights.