22119973_omslag108px
Rss

The Dovenschmidt Quarterly

About this journal  

Subscribe to the email alerts for this journal here to receive notifications when a new issue is at your disposal.

Issue 4, 2013 Expand all abstracts
Editorial

Access_open Guest Editorial

Authors Jan Eijsbouts
Author's information

Jan Eijsbouts
Prof. A. Jan A.J. Eijsbouts, Institute for Corporate Law, Governance and Innovation Policies, Faculty of Law, Maastricht University.
Article

Access_open Business and Human Rights

The Next Chapter

Authors John G. Ruggie
Author's information

John G. Ruggie
John G. Ruggie is the Berthold Beitz professor in human rights and international affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, faculty chair of the Kennedy School’s Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative, and affiliated professor in international legal studies at Harvard Law School. From 2005 to 2011, he was the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Business and Human Rights. He now chairs the boards of two non-profits, New York-based Shift: Putting Principles into Practice, and the London-based Institute on Human Rights and Business.
Article

Access_open The OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct

Soft Law with Hard Consequences

Keywords Corporate Social Responsibility, Responsible Business Conduct, Supply chain responsibility, Labor standards, Human rights
Authors Roel Nieuwenkamp
AbstractAuthor's information

    OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises are the most comprehensive international public standard on all areas of CSR with 46 adherent governments. The unique feature of the Guidelines is its grievance mechanism. The National Contact Points for the OECD Guidelines serve as a complaints and problem solving mechanism for trade unions and NGO’s related to for example human rights and labor standards. Since 2011 the Guidelines apply not only to investments but also to global supply chains. The concept of CSR Due Diligence in the supply chains is now a key pillar of CSR.


Roel Nieuwenkamp
Prof. Dr. Roel Nieuwenkamp is Chair of the OECD Working Party on Responsible Business Conduct. In this capacity, he supervises the corporate responsibility work of the OECD, invests in outreach to non-adherent countries and provides leadership to CSR programmes, e.g. on the financial sector, mining sector, etc. Since 2010, he is part-time professor of public administration at the University of Amsterdam.
Article

Access_open Business Enterprises and the Environment

Corporate Environmental Responsibility

Keywords Corporate Environmental Responsibility, Environmental Due Diligence, Environmental CSR, Business enterprises and the environment, Environmental complement to Ruggie Framework
Authors Katinka D. Jesse and Erik V. Koppe
AbstractAuthor's information

    In 2011, following his 2005 initial mandate of the UN Commission on Human Rights and his extended 2008 mandate of the UN Human Rights Council, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) on the issues of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises, Professor John Ruggie, issued the final text of the ‘Guiding Principles for the Implementation of the United Nations “Protect, Respect and Remedy Framework”‘. The 2008 Framework on Business and Human Rights and the complementing 2011 Guiding Principles consist of three pillars: the duty of states to protect human rights, the responsibility of business enterprises to respect human rights, and access to remedies for victims of human rights abuses. They currently qualify as the dominant paradigm in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) discourse, also because they now form part of various soft law and self-regulation initiatives. The Framework and Guiding Principles do not, however, specifically focus on environmental issues, but their systematic approach and structure do provide a model to address state duties and business responsibilities to care of the environment. This article is intended to complement the UN Framework and Guiding Principles on business and human rights with principles in the field of business and the environment. Hence, it is submitted that states have a customary duty to care for the environment; it is similarly submitted that business enterprises have a responsibility to care for the environment; and it is submitted that stakeholders must have access to remedies in relation to breaches of these duties and responsibilities.


Katinka D. Jesse
Dr. Katinka D. Jesse is post-doctoral research fellow at North-West University, South Africa.

Erik V. Koppe
Dr. Erik V. Koppe is assistant professor of public international law at Leiden Law School, The Netherlands. This article is partly based on research conducted by Jesse and Koppe as HUGO Fellows at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in Wassenaar in the fall of 2011.

Martijn Scheltema
Martijn Scheltema is partner with Pels Rijcken & Droogleever Fortuijn (a The Hague-based law firm), professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam and member of the governing board of ACCESS (see <www.ACCESSfacility.org>). This article is based on research conducted by the author on effectiveness of remedy outcomes of non-judicial mechanisms on behalf of ACCESS and the United Nations Working Group on Human Rights.
Article

Access_open Better Access to Remedy in Company-Community Conflicts in the Field of CSR

A Model for Company-Based Grievance Mechanisms

Keywords CSR, human rights, grievance mechanism, interest-based approach, rights-based approach
Authors Cristina Cedillo
AbstractAuthor's information

    The Special Representative to the UN Secretary-General on human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises, John Ruggie, establishes access to remedy as one of the three pillars of the UN ‘Protect, Respect, Remedy’ Framework. In this Framework, Ruggie prescribes that company-based grievance mechanisms can be one effective means of enabling remediation to those potentially being impacted by business enterprises’ activities. This report proposes a model for company-based grievance mechanisms that follow a combination of interest-based and rights-compatible approaches to conflict resolution of all corporate social responsibility issues in company–stakeholder relationships.


Cristina Cedillo
Cristina Cedillo (MA, LLM) participated in the master’s programme in International Business Law and Globalization at the Utrecht University School of Law, Economics and Governance, Utrecht (The Netherlands). The author is very grateful to Serge Bronkhorst and Tineke Lambooy for their guidance and helpful comments on earlier drafts.
Button_em_en