The Human Rights Obligations And Regulations Of Multinational Companies

As a phased outcome of the working group,the articles of Zero Draft provide a starting point for negotiations on the said legally binding international instruments that may emerge in the future.There are 15 articles in Zero Draft,which includes detailed provisions on issues related to human rights in the context of activities undertaken by TNCs and other business enterprises.Nowadays,TNCs are recognized to have limited legal personality in certain specific fields.In particular,TNCs have realistically affected human rights through their business activities.Therefore,most international human rights instruments recognize that TNCs are obliged to respect,protect or even promote international human rights,but such obligations have been proven to be voluntary and not mandatory.In the context of current legal environment,there are three main ways to regulate TNCs against violating human rights law: the first one is to rely on the domestic law of the host country or the home country;the second one is to rely on international law to regulate TNCs directly or indirectly;the third one is to regulate TNCs by relying on social restraint mechanisms.However,each of the above three regulatory paths have certain defects.Therefore,effective regulation against violations of human rights by TNCs requires multi-path parallelism,the above three paths shall complement and cooperate with each other.