ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the relationship between John Ruggie's work as the SRSG and the evolution of corporate obligations under human rights law. It analyses Ruggie's response to the most fundamental legal issue presented to him: does the entire body of human rights law apply directly to corporations? Rejecting the approach taken by a group of UN experts two years earlier, Ruggie answered the question with an emphatic negative. The chapter explains that there is a distinction between international enforcement and placement of private duties. It shows that international human rights law indisputably imposes a duty on states to protect against private abuses of human rights, including by corporations. The debate over the application of human rights law to corporations has never questioned that corporations can have enormous effects on the enjoyment of human rights or that they have been involved in massive human rights abuses.
