Pitfalls and Pipelines - Philippine Indigenous Peoples Links

Chapter 2.7: International Processes and Complaints Mechanisms
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corporations, and to demand responsibilities for their potential
infringements of human rights which derive from these actions. In this
context, the claim to consider non-state actors (such as transnational
corporations) as subject to international legal obligations is gaining
strength. 62
A quick survey of legal arguments to uphold the argument that
transnational corporations are also subjects of obligations within the
framework of international human rights law will take us to Articles 28,
29 and 30 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These articles
stipulate the necessity to impose collective responsibility in order to
achieve the full realization of the rights contained in the Declaration, as
well as to consolidate a “social and international order which respects,
promotes and develops this order of rights.” An extensive and evolutionary
interpretation of Article 30 gives us grounds to consider transnational
corporations as subjects of legal responsibilities based on the following
sentence: “Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for
any state, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform
any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set
forth herein.” An updated interpretation of the concept “group or person,”
from the point of view of human rights, allows the deduction that legal
persons should be considered, especially at this point in time, as subjects
of rights and obligations, and therefore, by analogical interpretation,
so should transnational corporations. This makes it evident that, in our
process of updating the theory, we need to take into account the level of
impact and the enormous responsibility that transnational corporations
have in terms of the infringement of human rights today.
The subsequent practice of the United Nations, through its General
Assembly, was to attempt to institutionalize the use of the term “organs of
society” in order to widen the responsibilities in terms of human rights to
non-state actors. The instrument that added to this was the Declaration
on the Right and Responsibility of Individuals, Groups and Organs of
Society to Promote and Protect Universally Recognized Human Rights
and Fundamental Freedoms. 63 This connected with the demands in
the Preamble of the Universal Declaration that, although reiterating the
primary responsibility of the state in terms of human rights, strongly
affirms that individuals, NGOs and other social institutions or bodies,
have a mission and a responsibility in the protection of human rights and
fundamental freedoms, as well as in the advancement of societies. The
Declaration does not exhaustively list the entities, institutions or organisms
included in the ambiguous and open notion of “organs of society.” Any