ABSTRACT
It was noted in Chapter 2 that Ruggie’s foregrounding of the OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises represented a significant attempt to incorporate the Guiding Principles into global investment mechanisms. The system of National Contact Points (NCPs) that are used to scrutinise adoption of the OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises, perhaps along with his regular nod to the new International Organisation of Standardisation (ISO) standard on social responsibility, ISO 26000, is as close as we get in the Ruggie report to a commentary that advocates an international system of regulation. Ruggie sees the OECD Guidelines as one of the key means of implement-
ing his Agenda and the subsequent UN resolution, and the Guidelines tend to feature first in his examples of the impact of his framework (e.g. Ruggie, 2013a; Ruggie and Nelson 2015; see also Mares, 2010). In his 2010 report, while noting some weaknesses (and they are outlined below), he concluded that the NCPs, which address complaints under the OECD Guidelines, also have ‘the potential of providing effective remedy’ (Ruggie 2010, p. 19). Ruggie has also had some influence on the Guidelines. The latest version of the OECD Guidelines notes that it ‘draws upon the United Nations Framework for Business and Human Rights “Protect, Respect and Remedy” and is in line with the Guiding Principles for its Implementation’ (OECD, 2011, p. 31). As Mares (2012) notes, the Ruggie Agenda also encouraged the OECD to adopt a due diligence approach in its guidance for responsible trade in conflict minerals. But the significance of the OECD Guidelines should not be understood
merely in terms of its relationship to the Ruggie process. After all, the process predates the appointment of Ruggie by some three decades. Moreover, until the UN resolutions of 2011 and 2013, the OECD Guidelines still constituted arguably the only instrument directly addressing corporations and human rights formally adopted by governments (Cˇernicˇ, 2008). Indeed, the OECD Guidelines are arguably the single most developed system for upholding corporate human rights standards outside the regional human rights courts, and
one that is envisaged as a key mechanism for implementing the Guiding Principles. We will explore the role of the latter in detail in the following two chapters. For the time being, we turn now to analyse the role and effectiveness of the OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises.
