Social responsibility of multinational companies

Abstract

In the last decade, the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility has emerged with great force, motivating a series of voluntary initiatives, such as the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the ILO Tripartite Declaration of Principles on Multinational Companies and the policy and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. These international instruments, all soft law, have the purpose of introducing ordering guidelines for the socially responsible behavior of companies and their confluence around two concepts that, although they have been used in the corporate field, had not been mentioned in matters of human rights. That is, the notion of due diligence and that of sphere of influence. However, it is necessary to have a binding instrument, and in this sense the United Nations has been working until reaching Resolution 26/09 entitled "Development of a legally binding international instrument on transnational corporations and other companies with respect to human rights".