Guest Editorial: Corporations, Human Rights and Corporate Social Responsibility in Africa: Between Neglect and Inadequate Policy Direction

Yusuf, Hakeem O. and Adelopo, Ismail (2014). Guest Editorial: Corporations, Human Rights and Corporate Social Responsibility in Africa: Between Neglect and Inadequate Policy Direction. International Journal of Law and Management, 56(2) pp. 86–87.

Abstract

The roles of corporations, generally and multinational ones particularly, in our individual and collective lives are sometimes veiled but salient, and with far reaching implications. The development and spread of the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) around the core question of how business should interface with society has occurred virtually simultaneously with the contemporary focus on human rights. On its own terms too, CSR discourse in the academic and professional spheres appear to have reached tipping points but concerns about the role of corporations in many countries have grown in nearly geometric proportions. CSR and human rights, interestingly, engage at their core, a concern for society; either at the level of the individual, groups, communities or the state. They also share, even if only to varying extents, a normative interest in some form of accountability for power as a mechanism for promoting social well-being. Yet, notwithstanding fairly strong normative basis for expecting corporations to buy-in to human rights, corporations and human rights have found it difficult to mix. The flagrant violations of human rights across the globe have occurred (and continue) with complicity of powerful (typically but not only) multinational corporations (MNCs).

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