Humanizing the Business: A Legal Analysis on Business and Human Rights Law in the 21st Century

Abstract

Whilst economic growth is important for a country to develop, it is also important that the said development is achieved in a humane manner with due recognition given to the rights of people living in that country. Although when the concept of human rights first emerged in history, the prevalent mischief that it sought to remedy was the abuse of political power, the society has now changed following a period of technological evolution, which facilitated the emergence of a new type of power commonly known as economic power wielded by businesses. It has been identified that economic power is as much as dangerous as political power if exercised in an abusive manner. Thus, it is important that the existing legal framework relating to human rights should extend to include the corporate abuse of economic power in order to safeguard the rights of vulnerable humans. Hence, this research was conducted to analyse the existing national and international human rights regimes in order to discover the new developments therein to deal with the predominant human rights issues in the business environment in the 21st century following the black letter approach. It was revealed that despite certain issues that are yet to be addressed, both national and international legal systems have developed rapidly during the last decade to address these business and human rights issues. However, the legal system in Sri Lanka appeared to be vastly outdated in addressing these issues despite such issues being evidently prevalent in the country.