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Article

1 Jun 2008

Author:
Mark Taylor, Fafo Institute

The Corporate Accountability Evolution

…In the evolution of laws applicable to companies, corporate legal accountability for human rights has not been an easy or logical process. Yet, in the debates about business and human rights, one legal responsibility has remained uncontested: companies should obey the law in the jurisdictions in which they operate. For many years this meant companies could ignore human rights and still obey the law: human rights protections were either non-statutory (declarations but not legislation), not enforced or non-existent. But the steady evolution of a global social expectation that companies should respect international human rights standards, and the slow but continuous integration of international human rights laws and standards to national law, have changed the nature of corporate legal accountability for human rights…[T]he complicity concept implies that in some circumstances, normal business activity can create associations with human rights abuse and, depending on the nature of the violation, may thereby create criminal liability for the company…Whether the problem lies somewhere down the supply chain or embedded in a relationship with a host government, companies will have to conduct due diligence to ensure they avoid participating in the international crimes of others…