A Discussion On Human Rights Responsibility Of Transnational Corporations

In the context of globalization, transnational corporations achieve unprecedented development and become an important power that influences domestic and international affairs. On the one hand, transnational corporations play a positive role in promoting economic development, because they can effectively make up fund shortage in backward areas, enhance industrial technical level, create jobs, and improve international balance of payment. On the other hand, transnational corporations may violate human rights during the process of management. For example, some transnational corporations severely destroy natural environment during production, harshly treat aboriginals, sell goods produced by child labors and forced labor, etc. So, the issue of responsibility of transnational corporations for human rights has become a new topic for academic community. The paper is to study the issue of responsibility of transnational corporations for human rights from the three aspects of justification of responsibility of transnational corporations for human rights, definition of responsibility of transnational corporations for human rights and assumption of responsibility of transnational corporations for human rights.It is both objectively necessary and practically feasible for transnational corporations to assume responsibility for human rights. The objective necessity means that in order to seek huge profit, transnational corporations severely violate various human rights, including health right, environmental right, civil right and political right, etc., in production and management activities with their strong monopolistic advantage and competitive advantages. At present, human right abuse by transnational corporations is almost on the edge of "out of control". The practical feasibility for transnational corporations means that the continuously disclosed human rights record of transnational corporations has been widely condemned by international community, so that transnational corporations involves more and more humanity in management and operation. In addition, transnational corporations assuming responsibility for human rights can be justified in theory. Both the expansion of subject of international law and the development of international human rights law provide solid basis for transnational corporations to assume responsibility for human rights. Besides, from the perspective of balance of rights and obligations, transnational corporations shall assume responsibility for human rights. According to the viewpoint of balance of rights and obligations, if a transnational corporation has right to carry out activity in certain field, it must assume corresponding responsibility for activity in such field.The responsibility of transnational corporations for human rights mainly occurs in the following three relations:human rights responsibility caused by employment relations, human rights responsibility caused by operation relations, and human rights responsibility caused by geographical relations. When defining the scope of responsibility of transnational corporations for human rights, we shall not simply transplant the scope of states for human rights, but comprehensively consider the nature and objective of transnational corporations in the principles of balance and respect. The principle of balance means that the human rights mechanism binding transnational corporations shall give consideration to the balance of individual freedom and corporate interest. The principle of respect means that states have obligations to protect human rights as primary undertaker of human rights obligation, while transnational corporations need assume the only obligation of respecting human rights. Therefore, transnational corporations only need to assume passive human rights obligation, or take active measures to realize passive human right obligations. Typical responsibility of transnational corporation for human rights is caused by direct abuse acts. Derivative duties are only appropriate.When looking into responsibility of transnational corporations for human rights, international human rights law and domestic human rights law jointly make up accountability mechanism, playing a mutually complementary role in functions and guarantee scope. Under current accountability mechanism, the victim shall call transnational corporation to account for human rights based on domestic law, and when all domestic relief means are applied, the victim can turn to international relief. At present, most incidents of human rights abuse of transnational corporations involves governments, so I have specially studied the issue of assuming responsibility for human rights abuse caused by the link of transnational corporations and governments. In incidents of human rights abuse, the relations between transnational corporations and governments fall into three categories, i. e. government controlling transnational corporation, conspiracy of transnational corporation and government, and transnational corporation "capturing" government. When a government controls a transnational corporation, the transnational corporation shall be responsible for human rights corresponding to the responsibility for human rights assumed by the government. When a transnational corporation and a government collude human rights abuse, corresponding responsibility for human shall be determined by the level of involvement of the transnational corporation in human rights abuse. When a transnational corporation "captures" a government, the responsibility of the transnational corporation for human rights shall be fixed in accordance with the principle of superior responsibility in international law.