"Rana Plaza: The Failure of International Law or the Beginning of Global Corporate Responsibility?”
- bilsociety20
- 5 mag
- Tempo di lettura: 2 min
by Alice Dallone
It will soon be 13 years since the infamous collapse of the Rana Plaza factory building in Bangladesh. More than 1,100 deaths. More than 2,500 were hurt. Family and jobs were destroyed, terrible memories were made. The collapse of the Rana Plaza factory building in Bangladesh is deemed to represent the worst industrial incident to ever hit the garment and textile industry. Such tragedy could not have gone unforeseen; instead, it exposed long-ignored risks in global supply chains and forced companies, countries and institutions to confront reality and act to ensure that nothing like this would happen again.
With this intention, significant developments were made in the field of international law, business and human rights. Before Rana Plaza, the international system relied mostly on CSR and soft law. Instruments like the UN Global Compact (1999) and the UNGPs (2011) set expectations but lacked binding force. Criticisms in fact, stemmed mostly from their voluntary nature; in the first case, companies could pick and choose which principles to comply with (as well as no sanctions for non – compliance). UNGPs surely were more successful in incentivizing global normative coordination (in Europe, national laws incorporated UNGPs as, for instance, “due diligence requirements”) and in their purpose (introducing the concept of “corporate responsibility to protect Human Rights”).
Nevertheless, still no new international law obligations were created, which often allowed companies to avoid responsibility, due to a lack of both serious consequences and enforcement mechanisms/monitoring institutions. Such observations force us to ask ourselves; is soft law alone sufficient to address such serious matters? Shouldn’t international law ensure that companies are held accountable as much as any other State agent, in violation of human rights?
Efforts toward a binding UN treaty on business and human rights have progressed slowly and remain politically polarized. Several States, especially emerging countries, continue to push for a “hard law” approach; Ecuador, for instance, in 2014 advanced a proposal for a binding treaty on transnational corporations. Despite the widespread support, criticisms around the idea of a BHR Treaty persist: in fact many fear that it could be highly divisive, raising political fractions and economic competitiveness concerns.
Moreover, international law has traditionally shown some skepticism when recognizing human rights obligations against corporations rather than States. It is indeed argued that such approach could shift governments’ attention away from the implementation of widely accepted BHR standards, such as the UNGPs, especially when it comes to domestic companies.
It is surely controversial that only a tragedy like the one that occurred 13 years ago at Rana Plaza could spark such wide reactions across governments and industries. Whether this represents the beginning of global corporate responsibility remains uncertain. What’s undebatable, however, is that the BHR field can no longer rely on voluntary commitments alone.
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