Emerging Normative Frameworks on Transnational Human Rights Obligations

Abstract

Human rights problems and issues have become global, but human rights law has continued to focus primarily or exclusively on the domestic or territorial State. Given the multiplicity of State and non-state actors with varying degrees of power and importance, human rights law needs to be adapted, so that new duty-bearers such as foreign States, transnational corporations and international organisations can be integrated into the human rights legal regime. Over the last decade, efforts have been made to elaborate principles or frameworks that define the human rights obligations of different types of other duty-bearers than the domestic or territorial State. In this paper, we are concerned with what can be learnt from these norm-setting efforts conceptually.