International Soft Law, Human Rights and Non-state Actors: Towards the Accountability of Transnational Corporations?

The paper addresses the 'turn to soft law' and to Corporate Social Responsibility paradigm by United Nations and international organizations, in order to fill in some gaps in hard law and to make transnational corporations (and enterprises in general) responsible in some form for human rights violations and even for human rights fullfilment. With respect to human rights, TNCs seem to be given broadening obligations, which approach the borderline between ethics and law. The paper aims to assess whether, and to what extent, this trend could be a proper path to enforce the legal accountability of transnational corporations for human rights. The paper argues for the following point: the interplay between law and ethics should be assessed differently depending on which kind of correlative duty is at stake. With regard to negative duties, soft law tools concerning TNCs' conduct may weaken the impact of hard law. By contrast, when positive duties are concerned, insofar as the horizontal effect of rights cannot be assumed, soft law turns out to be much more useful to diffuse a culture of genuine social responsibility of TNCs.