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Business and Human Rights (LAWS70382)
Graduate coursework level 7Points: 12.5Online
Please refer to the return to campus page for more information on these delivery modes and students who can enrol in each mode based on their location.
About this subject
Contact information
May
Email: law-masters@unimelb.edu.au
Phone: +61 3 8344 6190
Website: law.unimelb.edu.au
Overview
Availability(Quotas apply) | May - Online |
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Fees | Look up fees |
The private sector represents one of the most important and daunting challenges facing the human rights community. As the reach and influence of companies has grown – sometimes dwarfing the states in which they operate – their impact on human rights has become impossible to ignore. Human rights have become the currency of major brands, helping determine Citibank financing, Exxon-Mobil relations with communities and working conditions along Wal-Mart’s enormous supply chain. Shareholder activists, NGOs, social movements, the media and governments are demanding greater transparency and reporting on human rights. The United Nations (UN), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the multilateral banks have adopted human rights standards for companies, and a growing body of soft and hard law (domestic and international) is beginning to define the precise scope of corporate human rights obligations. This subject will explore the fast-growing field of business and human rights, highlighting the most critical legal and practical issues surrounding efforts to advance corporate responsibility and accountability.
Principal topics include:
- The history of the business and human rights movement
- The political and ideological challenge to applying human rights to business
- The legal framework and institutions for corporate human rights accountability
- The UN “Protect, Respect, Remedy” Framework and UN Guiding Principles
- The debate around a global treaty on business and human rights
- Multi-stakeholder initiatives and soft law human rights standards
- Key legal challenges: effective remedies, 'non-state actors', 'sphere of influence' and 'complicity'
- Litigating corporate human rights
- Non-judicial advocacy strategies
- Business and human rights case studies
- Business and human rights in the digital economy
- Climate change, business and human rights
- The business management perspective on human rights and implementation challenges.
Intended learning outcomes
A student who has successfully completed this subject will:
- Have an advanced and integrated understanding of the current legal status of human rights as they apply to businesses
- Be aware, at an advanced level, of the workings of the key legal instruments and bodies relevant to business and human rights
- Have a sophisticated understanding of the political, legal and practical challenges in applying human rights standards to businesses
- Have a nuanced understanding of competing theoretical and legal approaches to setting and enforcing human rights standards regarding corporate activity,
- Be able to assess the strengths and weaknesses of such approaches in practice, as they apply to specific industries and global commodity chains
- Be able to apply general human rights principles to evaluate the conduct of companies in specific cases
- Have a sophisticated understanding of the specific regulatory and practical challenges posed by global commodity chains and bilateral and multilateral trade treaties
- Be able to think strategically about the different points of leverage (legal, financial, political) in promoting greater human rights accountability from companies.
- Have a forward-looking view of the new regulatory and human rights challenges raised by the information economy.
Last updated: 23 March 2024