Human Rights and Corporate Social Responsibility

Sixty years ago the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed that a wide range of human rights applied to all human beings without exception. Despite the fact that these rights are enshrined in a binding text1 they are very often violated because they are the first to be affected by the perverse effects of globalization and increased trade liberalization. The lack of an effective legal mechanism to protect these rights led civil society in the 1960s to develop a new concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR).