Transnational Corporations and Corporate Responsibility: Environmental Law and Human Rights Damage in Nigeria

ABSTRACT: The emergence of transnational corporations as strong and independent non-state actors based on their trans-border identity and increasing influence has led to numerous calls for regulation from scholars, NGOs and other international organizations. This however led to the adoption of the concept of corporate social responsibility that seeks to increase the accountability of corporation not only to their shareholders which have been their traditional response in terms of profit making, but also to the stakeholders who are affected by the actions (externalized costs) of TNCs. With CSR becoming a household policy framework for TNCs, other regulatory framework began to emerge especially from the international legal perspective. These regulatory mechanisms came in form of soft laws which were voluntary and non-binding in nature. Such as the OECD and ILO guidelines, UN Global Compact, UN Norms for Business, ATCA and other regional frameworks emphasizing the personhood of TNCs in international law. However what made these frameworks important was that it emerged as a form of international standard which was set by international law, United Nations and other International Organizations. Therefore this thesis tries to demonstrate that despite the presence of regulatory frameworks, CSR policies of TNCs have varied from one country to another especially among the developing nations and this variation has been linked to the strength of the regulatory framework in a particular country.Moving further, this thesis has demonstrated that despite the acclaimed successes of CSR in some developing countries, it has not been the same everywhere due to the strength/weaknesses of the regulatory frameworks in a particular country and thus leading to the adoption of Nigeria where CSR policies have failed as a case study. Examining TNCs and CSR in Nigeria has thus led to this thesis to conclude that despite the acclaimed sustainable development CSR is meant to provide, this has not been the case. This is due to the fact that CSR in Nigeria has been a cosmetic approach used in covering environmental degradation and human rights complicity of TNCs and this has been achieved through weak regulatory framework in Nigeria. Therefore this thesis was able to conclude that the consequences of weak regulatory framework are environmental degradation and human rights violation. The thesis therefore formulates policies that can be used in addressing negative CSR approaches such as punitive measures for states under the ICC for complicity in environmental degradation and human rights violation and also threat of credible punitive measures for TNCs. Keywords: CSR variation, TNCs, Environmental Law, Human Rights. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………