The concept of human rights due diligence, a part of broader notion of corporate responsibility, aims to identify, prevent, mitigate and address potential and actual negative impacts on human rights caused by activities of business entities in their supply chain. In view of the voluntary nature of the UN Guiding Principles and the corporate initiatives on human rights due diligence and their consequent ineffectiveness to prevent the risk of modern slavery in global supply chain, several developed countries and the EU adopted laws and directive to fill the governance gap to address such risk. These public regulatory instruments created a range of due accountability mechanisms including disclosure requirements, prevention, liability regime, remediation, and administrative penalties for companies for failure to implement due diligence obligations. It is crucial to acknowledge that these regulations have presented a paradigm shift from traditional voluntary nature of corporate social responsibility to legally binding norms that will require global brands to review their due diligence efforts and take measures for improving their compliance with human rights and environmental standards and host governments to initiate legal reform to ensure accountability of factory owners to prevent modern slavery.
International Journal of Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations