Search

There is a proliferation of literature discussing human rights and business, but far less that looks at the issue of businesses operating in conflict %ones and the applicability of international humanitarian law. This is understandable in terms of the prominence and dynamism of human rights as a sub-disdpline, contrasted with the conservatism of international humanitarian law. But from a doctrinal perspective it is somewhat odd, as the direct applicability of human rights norms to business is far less clear than the applicability of international humanitarian law. Section II of this paper describes the normative regime that is set up by human rights and international humanitarian law, before Section III turns to the specific situation of conflict %ones and efforts to regulate some of the newer entities on the scene, in particular private military and security companies. Section IV then sketches out a regime that focuses not on toothless regulation, but on a model of governance that combines limited sanctions with a wider structuring of incentives. These three parts are referred to in shorthand as "lawyers, " "guns, " and "money." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study that explores the disinvestment of Norway's Sovereign Wealth Fund from multinational corporations due to human rights violation. It notes the capability of ethics to generate legal norms by changing the reference points of the market and by providing a language for the articulation of rights. Moreover, it states that the precepts embodied in the Norwegian Council of Ethic's recommendations could become a precursor for the adoption of normative constraints.

This article seeks to open up the question of the foundation of human rights by reference not to their philosophical origins but their political function. It argues that attempts to ground human rights in objective fact (such as 'human nature') or in pure reason (as 'self-evident') are futile, but more importantly are unhelpful in the broader project of protecting those rights that are recognised as 'universal'. A more useful approach is to conceptualise human rights as a discourse in which the human being is constituted and reconstituted as the subject of rights. Allied with this theoretical analysis is the political project of establishing the conditions for meaningful conversation about human rights. More than any philosophical insight, this is the ultimate precondition for their recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]