The book addresses the issue of corporate respect for human rights by examining if and how states are obligated to ensure that corporations originating from their jurisdiction respect human rights when they operate abroad. The existence of such a duty is much debated by academics at national and international level, and in an attempt to bring something new to the table, the book examines both if states have extraterritorial obligations in regard to their corporations and what can be required of states under such an obligation.
The complex issue of states and corporate respect for human rights cannot adequately be addressed without including the approach to the problem taken in practice; Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR. The book therefore draws upon the concept of CSR and the approaches developed here and discusses whether states may utilize the CSR-based concept of human rights due diligence to fulfil their possible obligations to protect against human rights violations by corporations.