Violations of Human Rights by Transnational Corporations: Issue of Responsibility under International Law

ABSTRACT: In the past century, Transnational Corporations (TNCs) emerged as powerful economic entities in the international society. The recent emerging entities expanded their power and influence through cross-border operations. Despite the positive effects of such operations, TNCs‘ cross border operations may infringe human and labor rights, harm the environment, and massively exploit natural recourses especially in developing countries. However, states and especially developing state are unwilling or incapable of regulating TNCs‘ operations and attributing responsibility on TNCs for such infringements. In addition, the international law lacks a concrete legal framework to regulate the cross border operations of TNCs. Nevertheless, international, regional and domestic instruments were adopted to regulate TNCs‘ operations, such as the Global Compact, the UN Framework of Protect, Respect and Remedy, and the Alien Tort Claim Act. This thesis examines the issue of attributing responsibility on TNCs for human rights violations during their operations from a legal perspective. The thesis starts with examining the international legal personality of TNCs as actors in the international society to provide a concrete understanding of TNCs‘ participation in international law and international society. Moreover, this study investigates the mechanisms and instruments adopted on the international and domestic level to provide a concrete assessment of the effectiveness of such instruments. The thesis concludes that the current position of TNCs as actors in international law and international society illustrate a gap between the disciplines of international law and international relations due to inability of international law to incorporate TNCs in the process of international law and to reflect the interactions between members of the international society. Thus, the study calls for a codification of the concept of international legal personality in order to incorporate TNCs in the discipline of international law. As for the proposed instruments, this study considers these instruments as reflection of the international attention on the issue of human rights violations by TNCs; however the failure of such instruments to legally attribute responsibility on TNCs is deeply affected by the lack of clear legal personality of TNCs. Thus improving such instrument should be in the light of developing a concrete standard for the concept of international legal personality. Keywords: Transnational Corporations, international law, international legal personality, human rights. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………