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The Human Rights And Csr

Decent Essays

Company is considering opening a new branch

1- Your company is considering opening a branch in a very low cost, low rights country. You are asked to provide a discussion paper on whether the company needs to worry about human rights in that country: a. To what extent is this worry just an issue of CSR with no real risk issues to review
To large extent the company should worry about the CSR. The reason for that is most of the FDI is long-term investments; therefore, the company should not view the human rights and CSR issues in terms of current liability only but from long term strategy.
Although the log cost and low rights in the workplace might motivate the company to open a branch in such state; however, if the company decided to be involved in such breaches this can lead to potential legal issues and it jeopardize its reputation even in its home state, i.e. Loblaw’s Joe Fresh and Bangladesh factory tragedy.
On the other hand, we might assess the Legal risk or issue as low due to the fact that most of the human rights treaties has no teeth and does not enact direct legal obligations on companies, therefore, it became part of the companies CSR. Prime example to that is the Multinational enterprise (MNE) as the MNE is not subject of the international law; consequently, the rights and obligations regarding human rights and CSR are fairly vague. On the same hand, the UN guiding principles are soft law as they impose “voluntary standards” for corporations. Nevertheless, it

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