Business and Human Rights: American Exceptionalism or Corporate Protectionism?
In case you missed it, the Atlantic ran a terrific essay on May 28 titled Companies Commit Human-Rights Abuses in America, Too: And Yet Americans Tend Not to Describe the Exploitation that Way, by Christine Bader. We could call this another instance of American exceptionalism – and the comments posted to Bader’s article bear out the idea that many readers find minimum wage violations, work exploitation and even trafficking unworthy of the “human rights violation” appellation when the abuses happen in the U.S.
In the weeks since this article appeared, the UN has approved negotiation of a binding treaty on business and human rights for transnational corporations. However, exceptionalism appears to run deep. The U.S. voted against initiating these negotiations and has urged other nations to boycott the process. The European Union is also opposing the treaty proposal. For a fascinating, in-depth look on where things stand with this contentious process, see this July 10 article by reporter Carey Biron.
Meanwhile, many transnational companies — such as Sodexo and Christine Bader’s former employer BP — have embraced human rights language and the existing Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (plus public pressure) have clearly had some impact in encouraging and promulgating such analyses. The question is not whether businesses have identified the human rights issues that intersect with their work, it’s accountability.
One of the U.S.’s arguments against the treaty is that there are legal difficulties with holding a private party accountable under international law, which generally binds nations rather than private actors. But there are no such impediments to implementing human rights standards in domestic law, or — on the international level — to holding nations accountable for establishing and enforcing such binding domestic standards. The U.S. resistance to a binding treaty suggests, in fact, the the government is fully aware of the many corporate human rights violations in the U.S. that would come to light with more rigorous domestic enforcement of human rights standands. And that more rigorous scrutiny and enforcement might frustrate the modus operandi of many companies in the manufacturing sector and others.
Maybe the U.S. position is not a case of American exceptionalism, after all, but more accurately, corporate protectionism.