ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the limited attention that children's rights have received in the broader debate on the human rights obligations of business enterprises, especially within the recent multilateral frameworks. It focuses on normative developments in children's rights and business that were inspired by the general human rights field as attested by the Children's Rights and Business Principles (CRBPs) initiative and the General Comment No 16 of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. The ever-expanding web of global economic, social and political transactions and connections, routinely termed 'globalisation', presents both practical and normative challenges to the way in which we conceptualise human rights. The OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, originally dating from 1976, have been called the 'only multilaterally agreed and comprehensive code of responsible business conduct that government have committed to promoting'. UN treaty bodies have been illuminating different aspects of the business–human rights relationship for over two decades without specifically integrating children's rights.
