Beyond ‘Global Good Samaritans’: Transnational Human Rights Obligations

What we mean by human rights remains perhaps too anchored in the international legal frameworks that took shape after the Second World War. Those legal frameworks tend to take a myopic view on human rights duty-bearers. If human rights are to remain relevant for core societal challenges, such as climate change, exploitation of natural resources, or increasing inequalities, we need a better understanding of how human rights can engage more explicitly and effectively with power and inequitable and unjust global socioeconomic and political structures. Over the last 15 years, an ever increasing number of scholars and practitioners of human rights have been seeking to identify other duty-bearers beyond the territorial state, ranging from foreign states and international organizations to companies, in an effort to expand the relevance of human rights law in the quest towards global justice. This article identifies key challenges, takes stock of the current state of affairs, and suggests future directions for human rights law in tackling global structural inequities and injustices.