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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 September 2021
States hold international human rights obligations to protect rights-holders from infringements by third parties and to fulfil access to rights. States also increasingly rely on businesses to provide essential human rights resources, including for housing, food, and healthcare. How these obligations apply where States rely on businesses has not been adequately conceptualised, particularly regarding the scope of business infringements in this context, and how the obligation to fulfil relates to market regulation. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has not directly addressed these questions, but recent General Comments develop ambitious regulatory obligations in this area. However, their methodology is questionable, often collapsing the distinction between obligations to protect and to fulfil. This article reconstructs the obligations to provide distinct content under each. It delineates State duties to protect from profiteering and to fulfil human rights through market regulation. It concludes by arguing that this reconstruction may challenge central aspects of globalised capitalism based on the human rights harm inherent therein.
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5 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (adopted 16 December 1966, entered into force 3 January 1976) 993 UNTS 3 (ICESCR).
6 See, for example, on housing: Human Rights Council, ‘Report of the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and on the right to non-discrimination in this context: The Financialization of housing and the right to adequate housing’ (18 January 2017) UN Doc A/HRC/34/51, paras 34–7 (hereinafter UNSR, Financialization).
7 CESCR, ‘General comment No. 24 (2017) on State obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in the context of business activities’ (10 August 2017) UN Doc E/C.12/GC/24, para 17 (hereinafter General Comment 24, Business).
8 ibid paras 21 and 24; A Nolan, ‘Privatization and Economic and Social Rights’ (2018) 40 HumRtsQ 815, 818 (Nolan, Privatization). Nolan highlights the limited use of the obligation to fulfil in General Comment 24 and makes the important point that a State decision to privatise an essential service necessitates that fulfil obligations become relevant to that private actor and the regulation thereof. The argument herein builds on this perspective.
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33 GM Dery III, ‘Trading Privacy for Promotion? Fourth Amendment Implications of Employers Using Wearable Sensors to Assess Worker Performance’ (2020) 16 Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy 17.
34 S McKay et al, ‘Study on precarious work and social rights’ (Study VT/2010/084 carried out for the European Commission by the Working Lives Research Institute, April 2012) 5.
35 P Bourquin et al., ‘Why Has In-Work Poverty Risen in Britain?’ (2019) Institute of Fiscal Studies Working Paper W19/12, 12 <https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/14154>.
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39 UNSR, Financialization (n 6) para 27.
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41 Shue, Basic Rights (n 40) 52.
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43 ibid para 68.
44 ‘The obligation to respect requires the State, and thereby all its organs and agents, to abstain from doing anything that violates the integrity of the individual or infringes on her or his freedom, including the freedom to use the material resources available to that individual in the way she or he finds best to satisfy the basic needs.’ ibid para 67.
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48 Eide, Report on Food (n 42) para 68.
49 A Eide, ‘Human Rights and the Elimination of Poverty’ in A Kjønstad and JH Veit-Wilson (eds), Law, Power and Poverty (CROP Publishers 1997).
50 ICESCR (n 5).
51 Maastricht Guidelines (n 46) para 6.
52 General Comment 24, Business (n 7).
53 Duties to facilitate are usually cited in General Comments, see eg CESCR, ‘General comment No. 23 on the right to just and favourable conditions of work (article 7 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights)’ (7 April 2016) UN Doc E/C.12/GC/23, para 61.
54 General Comment 24, Business (n 7) 21–2.
55 ibid para 26.
56 ibid para 33.
57 ibid para 23.
58 ibid para 37.
59 See below for examples and see also Nolan, Privatization (n 8) 852–3.
60 General Comment 24, Business (n 7) para 21.
61 ibid para 24.
62 ibid para 19.
63 See, for similar blurred distinction, CESCR, ‘General Comment No. 18: The Right to Work (Article 6 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights)’ (6 February 2006) UN Doc E/C.12/GC/18, para 25 (protect) and para 36 (fulfil).
64 CESCR, ‘General Comment No. 12: The Right to Adequate Food (Art. 11)’ (12 May 1999) UN Doc E/C.12/1999/5, para 15 (CESCR, Food).
65 CESCR, ‘General Comment No. 22 (2016) on the right to sexual and reproductive health (article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights)’ (2 May 2016) UN Doc E/C.12/GC/22, para 43.
66 ibid para 14.
67 ibid para. 17.
68 This framing is borrowed from the UNGPs (n 13) Principle 13.
69 General Comment 24, Business (n 7) para 15.
70 ibid para 18.
71 ibid para 19.
72 ibid para 19.
73 General Comment 23 (n 53) para 59.
74 ibid para 61.
75 J Lee and A Smith, ‘Regulating Wage Theft’ (2019) 94 WashLRev 759.
76 ibid 767.
77 CESCR, ‘General Comment No. 4: The Right to Adequate Housing (Art. 11 (1) of the Covenant)’ (13 December 1991) UN Doc E/1992/23, para 8.
78 Birchall, D, ‘Challenging the Commodification of Human Rights: The Case of the Right to Housing’ (2021) 19 Santa Clara Journal of International Law 1Google Scholar.
79 ibid.
80 See on some human rights impacts of private equity investments: Appelbaum, E, Batt, R and Clark, I, ‘Implications of Financial Capitalism for Employment Relations Research: Evidence from Breach of Trust and Implicit Contracts in Private Equity Buyouts’ (2013) 51 British Journal of Industrial Relations 498CrossRefGoogle Scholar; E Appelbaum and R Batt, ‘Private Equity Buyouts in Healthcare: Who Wins, Who Loses?’ (2020) Institute for New Economic Thinking Working Paper Series 118.
81 CESCR, ‘General Comment No. 14: The Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health (Art. 12)’ (11 August 2000) UN Doc E/C.12/2000/4, para 35.
82 Discussed further in Birchall, D, ‘Corporate Power over Human Rights: An Analytical Framework’ (2021) 6 Business and Human Rights Journal 42, 56–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
83 General Comment 24, Business (n 7) para 21.
84 Nolan, Privatization (n 8) 835.
85 General Comment, Health (n 81) para 36.
86 Genera Comment, Sexual Health (n 65) para 17.
87 This bears a similarity to the functional approach to human rights jurisdiction, see: Shany, Y, ‘Taking Universality Seriously: A Functional Approach to Extraterritoriality in International Human Rights Law’ (2013) 7 Law and Ethics of Human Rights 47, 56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
88 In the UK, water suppliers are not permitted to shut off water for non-payment, suggesting an obligation to fulfil the right, Water Industry Act 1999, art 61, section 4.A.
89 Discussed critically in Hsieh, N, ‘Should Business Have Human Rights Obligations?’ (2015) 14 Journal of Human Rights 218CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Positive obligations are supported in Wettstein, F, ‘From Causality to Capability: Towards a New Understanding of the Multinational Corporation's Enlarged Global Responsibilities’ (2005) 19 Journal of Corporate Citizenship 105Google Scholar; Wettstein, F, ‘CSR and the Debate on Business and Human Rights: Bridging the Great Divide’ (2012) 22 Business Ethics Quarterly 739, 757–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
90 See for the most ambitious attempt to do just this: Wettstein, Global Justice (n 18) 311–47, and particularly for the purposes herein: 322–3 on multinationals such as agribusiness; 325 on privatisation; 328–33 on ‘global public goods’.
91 Maastricht Guidelines (n 46) para 6.
92 Eide, Report on Food (n 42) paras 71–2.
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