Megaprojects’ Social Sustainability and Workers’ Human Rights

The paper addresses an emerging question on social sustainability. Namely, some European systems, and recently European Union too, have focused their attention to the duty of a supply chain’s dominant undertaking regarding human rights of all workers involved in the manufacturing process, even those who are employees of other companies. From this perspective the essay argues that also a client of a megaproject - as any other companies that are in a leading position of its business - might has such a duty. After all, their implementation requires connected performances of several parties, whose content is influenced by the client, perhaps more than a company which is at the top of its line production. Protection of worker’s human rights is then a matter not entirely in the hands of contractors, because their choices are often affected by the will of the client. As a result, who commissions a megaproject has a duty of protection to human rights of all employees involved in the implementation, and in case of a violation that can be tied to its choice, it will have to answer, in similar terms as a dominant undertaking in a supply chain