Florian Wettstein

Increasingly, global businesses are confronted with the question of complicity in human rights violations committed by abusive host governments. This contribution specifically looks at silent complicity and the way it challenges conventional interpretations of corporate responsibility. Silent complicity implies that corporations have moral obligations that reach beyond the negative realm of doing no harm. Essentially, it implies that corporations have a moral responsibility to help protect human rights by putting pressure on perpetrating host governments involved in human rights abuses. This is a controversial claim, which this contribution proposes to analyze with a view to understanding and determining the underlying conditions that need to be met in order for moral agents to be said to have such responsibilities in the category of the duty to protect human rights.

This chapter provides an introduction to business and human rights (BHR) as a new research field in the intersection of corporate responsibility and international business and specifically reflects on it through, and relates it to, an emerging economies perspective. It aims at outlining the basic contours of the BHR field, clarifying its underlying rationale, as well as providing an overview of some prevalent issues and delineating it from other related concepts such as, particularly, corporate social responsibility. The chapter concludes with a reflection on some key research trends and themes emerging from the BHR field, which may be of particular relevance to international business and emerging markets scholars.

Increasingly, global businesses are confronted with the question of complicity in human rights violations committed by abusive host governments. This contribution specifically looks at silent complicity and the way it challenges conventional interpretations of corporate responsibility. Silent complicity implies that corporations have moral obligations that reach beyond the negative realm of doing no harm. Essentially, it implies that corporations have a moral responsibility to help protect human rights by putting pressure on perpetrating host governments involved in human rights abuses. This is a controversial claim, which this contribution proposes to analyze with a view to understanding and determining the underlying conditions that need to be met in order for moral agents to be said to have such responsibilities in the category of the duty to protect human rights.