UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights
The UN Guiding Principles on business and human rights (BHR) were adopted in 2011 and signified a turning point in BHR. The UNGPs have facilitated a shift from soft law to hard law and smart regulatory mixes. Central to this has been the versatile and practical notion of ‘human rights due diligence’.
Since 2011, RWI has published, educated, trained and raised awareness on various facets of the UNGPs.
The more recent RWI work on the UN system and EU developments builds on this in-depth understanding of the UNGPs from regulatory, corporate and global governance perspectives.
Selected publications:
First book published on the UNGPs, globally: R. Mares (ed.), The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights – Foundations and Implementation, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers (Leiden, Boston 2012) Link
R. Mares, ‘Liability within corporate groups: Parent companies accountability for subsidiary human rights abuses’, in S. Deva (ed.) Research Handbook on Human Rights and Business (Edward Elgar, 2020) pp. 446–470 Link
R. Mares, ‘Securing human rights through risk-management methods: breakthrough or misalignment?, Leiden Journal of International Law 32:3 (2019), pp. 517-535 Link
R. Mares, ‘Corporate transparency regulations: a hollow victory?’ Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 36:3 (2018) pp. 189–213 Link
R. Mares, ‘De-centring human rights from the international order of states – The alignment and interaction of transnational policy channels’, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, Vol. 23:1 (Winter 2016) pp. 171-199 Link
R. Mares, ‘Corporate and State Responsibilities in Conflict Areas’, Nordic Journal of International law, Volume 83, Number 3 (2014) pp. 293-345 Link