This study is motivated by the concern and frustration for the lack of meaningful progress in the struggle to establish a normative framework to protect human rights (HR) along the entire domain of business activity... I have prepared an assessment of the debate on the responsibilities of business regarding human rights... I conclude [by] proposing a new HR paradigm [for business]...with true democracy and real sustainability as its underpinnings... Building [a new] paradigm inevitably requires conceptually redefining the purpose of business to make it congruent with an ethos of true democracy and to transform the market into one of various vehicles for generating the adequate level of sustainable social welfare....[The] new raison d'être of enterprises must be to generate social welfare in a sustainable manner. Shareholder value, as the only purpose of business, has to be eradicated given its absolute incongruence with the common good and its proven capacity to generate ever greater levels of inequality, exclusion, poverty and depredation of the planet...