Business and Human Rights

Knowledge

• Good knowledge of the links between business practices and human rights, including corporate social responsibility (CSR) as defined by the UN and other international organisations
• Good knowledge of practical experiences in making human rights a normative framework for the conduct of business in different societal and political contexts
• Good knowledge of the arguments in favour of and against extending human rights to the corporate sector and the scope for making human rights regulatory measures for corporate behaviour
• Good knowledge of legal developments, including normative and remedial mechanisms
  

Skills

• Analyse and identify relevant human rights issues in the CSR debate and understand how these are of practical importance to transnational and small-scale businesses
• Locate applicable source material and identify and interpret the relevant substantive rules and principles on the duties of companies to respect human rights as they arise in case law
• Understand the obstacles and challenges of integrating human rights in the conduct of business
• Be able to critically evaluate existing human rights treaties, and existing guiding principles, on human rights and business behaviour
  

General competence
The students will be able to:

• Carry out case studies of the CSR policies of selected companies in different social, economic and political contexts
• Assess the impact of human rights on corporate behaviour
• Address issues of consumer rights and behaviour from the position of human rights ethics
• Assess the practices and impact of different strategies of remedy and compensation
• Analyse empirical cases of business conduct in light of human rights law

No obligatory prerequisites beyond the minimum requirements for entrance to higher education in Norway.

You may register for this course if you have admission to a Master¿s programme at UiO. All applicants must satisfy the formal prerequisites. Priority is given to students of the Master of Philopsophy programme in the Theory and Practice of Human Rights

The examination in this course is not available for external candidates. Only students admitted to the course may sit for the examination.

Lectures and seminars.

Students are graded on the basis of a 4 hour written open book digital school examination.

The candidates will take the exam on a PC and the submission is digital in Inspera. Read about School exams in Inspera

You must familiarize yourself with the rules that apply to exam support materials, and the use of sources and citations. If you violate these rules, you may be suspected of cheating or attempted cheating. You can read about what the university considers cheating, and the consequences of cheating here.

Previous exam papers

You can usually resit an exam, but the conditions depend on whether you had a valid reason for absence from the regular exam. Read more about resitting an exam.

If a student has submitted a written assignment a second time in the same course s/he can only submit it in a new version. This means that there must be another title and theme, or that the new version must be considerably changed from the first version.

Students who wish to retake the exam in a later semester are not guaranteed that the course is ever repeated with a similar reading list, nor that the exam arrangement will be the same.

Grades are awarded on a scale from A to F, where A is the best grade and F is a fail. Read more about the grading system.

English.

You may request an explanation of your grades, and you may also appeal against your grades or make a complaint about formal examination errors. Read more about explanations and appeals.

Evaluation

Feedback from our students is essential to us in our efforts to ensure and further improve the high quality of our programmes and courses. All courses are subject to continuous evaluation. At regular intervals we also ask students on a particular course to participate in a more comprehensive, periodic evaluation of this course.

Required reading

Articles and extraits from books marked with an asterisk (*) are available in a compilation of texts (kompendium) which can be purchased from Gnist Akademika bookstore at the Law Faculty (Domus Nova building).

Textbook:

• Deva, Surya. Regulating Corporate Human Rights Violations. Humanizing Business. London: Routledge, 2012. (240 pp.)

Articles compiled in a compendium:

• *Darrow, Mac, 'World Bank and International Monetary Fund', Encyclopedia of Human Rights, Dec 2009 (9pp.) vol. 5, pp. 373-381
• *Kinley, David. Civilising globalisation. Human rights and the global economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Chs 4 (Commerce and human rights), pp. 145-203. (68 pp).
• *Langford, Malcolm 'Cosmopolitan Competition: The Case of International Investment', in Katja Aas and Cecilia Bailliet, Cosmopolitan Justice and its Discontents (London: Routledge, 2011). pp. 178¿204 (26pp.)
• *Mestad, Ola, "Attribution of responsibility to listed companies" in Gro Nystuen, Andreas Føllesdal and Ola Mestad (eds). Human Rights, Corporate Complicity and Disinvestment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. 79-106. (27 pp.)
• *Sullivan, Rory and Nicolas Hachez, "Human Rights Norms for Business: The Missing Piece of the Ruggie Jigjaw ¿ the Case of Institutional Investors" in Radu Mares (ed). The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Right. Leiden: Nijhoff, 2012. Pp. 217-145. (28 pp.)

Articles available as E-journals or E-books:

The journal articles below are available in fulltext. The UN-reports below are available online (open links).

• Gillies, Alexandra, `Reputational Concerns and the Emergence of Oil Sector Transparency as an International Norm`, in International Studies Quarterly, Vol.54,No.1, pp. 103¿126 (23pp.). http://www.jstor.org/journals/00208833.html (E-journal)
• Joseph, Sarah. Blame it on the WTO? A Human Rights Critique</

If you have a disability or a health problem that entails significant inconvenience in an examination situation, you may be considered for special examination arrangements. Mothers who are breastfeeding may apply for extra time to complete the exam.

A student may sit this exam up to 3 times. If a student wishes to withdraw from the exam, s/he must do so in StudentWeb at least two weeks prior to the first day of the exam. Failure to do so will be counted as one of the three opportunities to sit the exam.