The dominant business and human rights paradigm at work: serving the cause of justice or preserving the global economic order?

Abstract In recent decades, there has been growing recognition within the global governance arena of the need to respond to the impacts of business on human rights. This recognition has led to the development of instruments and initiatives, including the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, that have conceptualised and institutionalised how the issue of such impacts is to be understood and addressed. These instruments and initiatives, identified here as the dominant business and human rights paradigm, give content to a business ‘responsibility’ to respect human rights. This article develops a critique of that paradigm, arguing that its primary aim has been not to address business-related harm, but to maintain the global economic order in the face of ‘backlash’ to the harm it produces. Taking the 2018 trial judgment in Kalma v African Minerals as a case study, the article then shows how the paradigm works to that end.