As part of my ongoing literature review section, I wanted to highlight a relevant BHR article by Tom Campbell.
In his April 2006 article entitled A Human Rights Approach to Developing Voluntary Codes of Conduct for Multinational Corporations in the Business Ethics Quarterly, Tom Campbell uses Voluntary Codes of Conduct (“VCCs”) to highlight many of the issues that the “Respect Framework” and the “Guiding Principles” later address at the UN level. Campbell discusses a general disinclination of host countries to regulate Multinational Corporations (“MNCs”) because of their economic impact. But, he also describes the need for MNCs to be held accountable for their practices especially on a human rights level. In that regard, this article is insightful and forward-looking on the issues currently at the heart of the business and human rights debates.
-Campbell suggests inserting specific human rights language in eachVCC that will give MNCs better ideas on how adhere to human rights.
-Campbell describes that VCCs can be a “functional alternative to legal regulation” or a stopgap where there is a void in regulation, act as a supplement to a regulatory, or monitor and regulate behaviors of MNCs .
-Campbell makes clear that in order for human rights to be taken seriously in the context of VCCs, the individual rights that pose the greatest concerns in any given MNC should be stated with specificity.
About Tom Campbell: Tom Campbell is the director of Business and Professional Ethics at CAPPECharlesSturt University. He has written extensively on law and legal philosophy. He was the dean of the Dean of the Faculty of Law at ANU in the mid-nineties. He also on the Australian Alternative Bill of Rights.
The article can be accessed here –http://www.unglobalcompact.org/issues/human_rights/The_UN_SRSG_and_the_UN_Global_Compact.html
Image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tom_Campbell_106th_Congress.jpg
