Human rights limitations: clarifying the emerging obligations of business

The United Nations recognises that businesses have responsibility for human rights and there are ongoing negotiations that may lead to the adoption of legally binding framework to ascribe human rights obligations to businesses. The present study considers that ascribing human rights obligations to businesses raises the corresponding need to clarify whether human rights limitations could be factored into their obligations. In contribution to the clarification of this issue, this thesis examines two requirements for permissible limitation of human rights, namely, the concepts of ‘law’ and ‘legitimate aims’. It undertakes a legal analysis of these concepts in terms of whether within the specific context of business, they might respectively include (i) rules that are generated by businesses themselves and (ii) the core interests of businesses as grounds for human rights limitations. It shows how the doctrine of private delegation explains the disposition of businesses to generate rules that may serve as valid bases for human rights limitations and finally proposes the core interests of businesses that may also have to be prioritised as the ‘equivalents’ of legitimate grounds for human rights limitations in business contexts.