Human Rights, Corporate Complicity and Disinvestment

Description

How can businesses and their shareholders avoid moral and legal complicity in human rights violations? This central and contemporary issue in the field of ethics, politics and law is of concern to intergovernmental organizations such as the UN and to many NGOs, as well as investors and employees. In this volume legal scholars and political philosophers identify and address the intertwined issues of moral and legal complicity in human rights violations by companies and those who invest in them. By describing the legal aspects of human rights violations in the corporate sphere, addressing the complicity of companies with regard to such norms and exploring the influence of investors, the book provides a thorough introduction to corporate social responsibility. Human Rights, Corporate Complicity and Disinvestment will set the research agenda on socially responsible investment for years to come.

Gro Nystuen is Chair of the Council on Ethics for the Norwegian Government Pension Fund - Global, and is dr juris and Associate Professor at the University of Oslo and the Defence Staff University College. She was Chair of the Advisory Commission on International Law for the Petroleum Fund from 2001 to 2004. Nystuen has been in the Foreign Service since 1991 and has been seconded to the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia as well as the Office of the High Representative from 1995 to 1997. She was also a member of the Graver Committee which proposed the ethical guidelines for the Petroleum Fund. She is a managing partner at the International Law and Policy Institute, Oslo. Andreas Follesdal is a member of the Council on Ethics for the Norwegian Government Pension Fund - Global, and is Professor and Director of Research at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, University of Oslo. Andreas holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Harvard University and has both studied and taught at the University of Oslo, Harvard University and the Norwegian School of Management (BI). In 2003, he was a Fulbright 'New Century Scholar' on the topic, 'Fair Europe?' Andreas has edited books on democracy, the welfare state, consultancy and the European constitution, and is Founding Series Editor of Themes in European Governance, Cambridge University Press. Ola Mestad is Vice Chair of the Council on Ethics for the Norwegian Government Pension Fund - Global, and is Professor dr. juris at the Centre for European Law and Department of Petroleum and Energy Law, University of Oslo. He has been a partner in the law firm BA-HR (Oslo) for many years, mainly in charge of oil and gas law. Currently, he is working with international economic law, especially trade and investment, as well as contract law and EU law. Ola Mestad has also done work on legal aspects of corruption.

'This outstanding volume of essays uses the Norwegian Government Pension Fund - Global as a vehicle to explore the scope and extent of states' human rights obligations. Human Rights, Corporate Complicity and Disinvestment will most certainly play an influential role in the progressive development of both corporate and state human rights accountability.' Mark Gibney, Belk Distinguished Professor, University of North Carolina, Asheville