ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the historical background to current debates on the relationship between corporations and human rights that is being played out in the UN Human Rights Council and related international fora. The chapter analyses the significance of a range of social forces and pressures for change in the post-War period up to the appointment of a UN Special Representative on business and human rights in 2005. The period following this appointment will be considered in Chapter 2. Here, we set out the reasons for the emergence of this debate in the UN, exploring its origins from the 1950s onwards, and provides an analysis of the key moments in the development of this debate. It has become received wisdom that the contours of contemporary debates
date back to the mid-1990s, when a series of high-profile events placed the issue of business and human rights squarely in the sights of the global media. Hristova’s (2012, p. 92) assertion that ‘The impact of corporate conduct on human rights first attracted the attention of the U.N. in the late 1990s’ reflects an assertion that is commonly repeated by practitioners in this field. Indeed, there is a residual assumption amongst many, particularly in the human rights NGO community, that the problem of corporate human rights first rose to the surface in the 1990s with the series of cases that ended up is the US tort courts (discussed in Chapter 3). This chapter will draw upon evidence and analyses that reveal the origins of the debate as being much earlier. It therefore seeks to develop a much longer historical perspective to understand the emergence of a movement that has sought to identify and challenge corporate complicity in human rights violations. This historical analysis will show that this field of policy has been highly contested and fractious, and will therefore locate the origins of the similarly fractious attempt to build a UN consensus around this policy field in recent years.
