General Counsel Must Keep Corporate Commitments to Human Rights

While some jurisdictions have relaxed their legal requirements for corporate social responsibility and sustainability reporting, companies remain responsible for mitigating and preventing adverse impacts on human rights, especially the rights of vulnerable populations such as children.

This isn’t the time for corporate general counsel to retreat from oversight. Weakened regulatory obligations only increase the legal, business, and reputational risks companies face if they engage in, or tolerate, human and child rights abuses in their operations and supply chains. Lawyers must vigilantly guide their companies to uphold international human rights principles and practices.

Uncertainty Creates Risk

The regulatory picture for multinational corporations as it relates to human rights is mixed. While the US appears to be retreating from sustainability disclosure mandates, Europe has moved, albeit in fits and starts, in the opposite direction. As we learned with privacy compliance over the last decade, a patchwork approach to regulation creates the kind of uncertainty that can wreak havoc on businesses.

Despite variation and changes to national reporting regulations, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, or UNGPs, and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct provide a stable framework for companies to embed respect for human rights into their business processes.

Given the complexity of conflicting regulatory approaches, lawyers should be guided by these well-established global standards. They remain the touchstone for building sustainable human rights compliance programs.

Children Warrant Attention

International law regards children as uniquely vulnerable rights-holders. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, or CRC—ratified by nearly every country in the world—calls on national governments to regulate the businesses in their jurisdictions to protect children. Doing so signals to the private sector that respecting children’s rights is its job.

Certain business processes and products pose higher risks to children. In the US, for example, well-known consumer brands maintain relationships with upstream suppliers who rely on child labor to operate meatpacking plants, auto-parts factories, and slaughterhouses.

The cost of this exploitation goes beyond the hefty fines companies incur when their abuse comes to light. The fallout includes shareholder lawsuits, heightened government scrutiny, and erosion of consumer trust. Companies can avoid these consequences by integrating respect for children into their business strategies and operations.

Balance of Power

Over the past two decades, the enforcement of responsibility for human rights has shifted away from the state and toward the private sector. There are several reasons for this.

Governments set minimum statutory and regulatory baselines. Political headwinds often produce gaps or inconsistencies within and across jurisdictions. Corporations create risk when they default to the lowest common denominator.

Nongovernmental organizations, journalists, and advocates prompt action by uncovering misconduct, including child labor in supply chains, unsafe working conditions, or exploitative online practices.

Investors use capital as leverage. Asset managers demand due diligence and clarity with respect to litigation exposure and reputational damage tied to human rights violations.

Courts provide a mechanism for relief and a backstop to regulatory inaction. Plaintiffs pursue creative legal strategies to vindicate their human rights, including by leveraging domestic courts and international human rights tribunals. They have developed novel legal theories to hold parent companies liable for failing to prevent harm within their supply and value chains.

Corporations themselves hold power. They shape labor markets, digital environments, and access to essential goods and services.

For children specifically, the balance of power leans toward corporate actors. Governments may ratify treaties such as the CRC, but implementation gaps are pervasive.

Civil society can raise alarms, but NGOs don’t have insight into corporate supply chains and can’t police online platforms. Courts may remedy instances of child labor, but they act after injury occurs.

In practice, companies have the greatest ability to prevent harm to children—whether through procurement policies, due diligence, or digital design choices—and to create mechanisms to reduce the chance that abuses will recur.

Lawyers Ensure Respect

At its best, an in-house legal function should be synonymous with the business “conscience.” Our role as lawyers is most difficult—but also most critical—when governing law is ambiguous or inconsistent.

We have a unique responsibility in this moment to help companies navigate the shifting human rights regulatory landscape. This means a few things.

Reinforcing international frameworks. The UNGPs, the CRC, and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Guidelines remain authoritative, regardless of domestic regulatory fluctuations. Embedding them—and the human rights due diligence practices they countenance—into company policies creates stability and consistency for business clients.

Maintaining supply chain diligence. Even if disclosure isn’t required, regular risk mapping, supplier audits, and remediation protocols are essential.

Engaging stakeholders. Civil society, investors, partners, and employees continue to expect responsible conduct. Regular dialogue with these groups strengthens credibility and preempts crises.

Framing compliance as resilience. Rather than presenting human rights due diligence as a nettlesome cost, legal leaders should frame it as insurance against reputational catastrophe, litigation, and business/strategic instability.

Centering child rights. Whether in supply chains, marketing, or digital environments, children’s welfare must be a focal point for companies as they assess and mitigate risk.

By adhering to international frameworks such as the UNGPs, making global standards the core of their governance practices, and developing robust due diligence systems, counsel can fulfil their legal mandate to respect and protect human and children’s rights. These steps make it easier to do the right thing—and they also fulfill responsibilities to C-suite and board clients.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, and Bloomberg Government, or its owners.

Author Information

Jessica Leinwand is general counsel of UNICEF USA and previously served as director of strategic counsel at Meta, Inc. She is an adjunct professor on child rights and business at American University’s Washington College of Law.

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