Corporate Responsibilities of MNCs : Cases of Human Rights Violation

Since the dawn of human civilisation the corporate class has been a very influential position as far as the framing of law and policies of a nation is concerned. On the one hand, with the advent of industrialisation in Europe, the market economy was boosted, on the other hand, several cases of human right violation came into existence. This gave basis to the hypothesis of Karl Marx, who divided the society into two classes i.e., bourgeoisie and proletariat, that the suppressed class will revolt against the violation of its right and will take over the ruling class. With the passes of time it has been experienced that various multinational corporations, for example, Hindustan Unilever, Coca Cola, Vedanta etc. have been indulged in human right violations of the people of one nation or the other. However with the emerging growth of liberalisation, various laws and policies were framed so as to protect the basic human rights of the people, for example, United Nation Sustainable Development Goals, United Nations Millennium Goals, voluntarily guidelines, 2013(in case of India). Judiciary has also played a vital role in making MNC’s liable for violating human rights, for example, in cases of Rayland v. fletcher, Bhopal gas tragedy case, Narmada Bachao Andolan case etc. Even after having ample amount of legislation and judicial precedent, the instances of human right violation seems inevitable. The authors in this academic venture will focus on the instances of human rights violation by multinational corporations with the recent case studies and the reasons that why democratic governments are unable to counter effectively these problems even after being a sovereign state