Corporate Human Rights Responsibility : A Continuous Quest for an Effective Regulatory Framework

Abstract: This study is build by a premise that there is a need to include regulatory approach in the discourse of business and human rights particularly of economic, social, and cultural rights which often neglected. The study is not expecting to produce exhausted set of rules which can directly or effectively applicable to all global corporation nor a set of global treaty which can cover the whole aspects of corporation and human rights. It is not either to accept or reject idea of regulation or deregulation. Effective regulation analysis is not about choosing between these two but rather to put emphasis on the interplay between different regulations and actors as a continuous process which can design better theoretical solutions. Therefore, the intention is to set the development of corporate human rights responsibility concept into the classical legal theories in international law and to find out what is essential to develop an effective and efficacious international framework for corporate human rights responsibility. From that centre issue arises two sub-questions namely who should regulate Multinational Enterprises/global corporation and how to regulate Multinational Corporation in relation to their human rights responsibility particularly in the field of economic, social, and cultural rights. Answering such problems, three main focuses will be explored. The first division concerns restructuring process of regulatory framework. The aim is to set up the theoretical foundation for the issue of human rights in Multinational Corporation’s operations. The second part deals with three levels of regulations: national, international, and self-regulation. Each level provides distinct nature, emphasis and problems. And the third part is the concluding observation in which how the interaction between levels will be discussed and some possible solutions are offered. In sum, it is argued in this dissertation that effective regulatory framework should be associated to the broader perspective control covering any forms of social control or influences regardless its sources. In other words, the effective regulation is the pluralism of control. The choice of controls itself becomes a continuous process of interaction between actors.