So just to kind of be on the same page, I'm aware, I just felt like I need to briefly

at least define what I mean by business and human rights.

Just for the sake of this presentation, of course, it can pack much, much more into an

actual definition of this business and human rights or much, much less, depending on where

you stand.

But I see, at least for the sake of today, business and human rights as concerned on

the one hand with the justification, definition, delineation of corporate human rights responsibilities.

So where do those responsibilities actually come from?

How do we justify them on what grounds?

Do we justify them?

I'll get to that later on.

And then on the other hand, the conceptualization and assessment of accountability measures.

So how do we then hold corporations accountable for those human rights responsibilities that

we have come up with?

And very often it is in a way that me as a business analyst, I'm more concerned with

the conceptualization of responsibility.

And if I look to the legal discourse, that's where the accountability piece comes in.

The important thing, I think, is that we bring those two things in coherent ways together.

So this discussion on responsibilities on the one hand and accountability on the other

hand started, at least in the academic discourse, started to emerge, say, in the 1980s and 1990s.

And many of you have probably kind of started to read into the business and human rights

discourse.

And if I say started to emerge, I mean, kind of a systematic international coordinated

in some sense, discourse.

I think you see first contributions in the late 1980s.

Of course, if you do find sporadic earlier writings, but then it really starts to take

off in the 1990s.

Today I would call it one of the most significant kind of discussions within the broader field

of discourse on corporate responsibility, not social responsibility, but more all in

comparison corporate responsibility.

I think within this broader field, I think this is one of the most dynamic, most significant

and not just in an academic sense, but also in the policy discourse, in practice.

It's becoming increasingly relevant also in those domains.

It's also very interesting.

I think that the Dr. Koko Orteer at the University of Joste, we've discussed before, students

from many different disciplines engaging business and human rights.

And I think that's a signature element of the discussion today, at least as such.

And it's not always that way.

I think it's still today also still heavily dominated by the by legal disciplines, but

it has become very interdisciplinary, at least if you look at the broader discussion.

Another interesting fact, I think, about human rights is how fluid and permeable the boundaries

of the field are in terms of where the scholarship ends and where does activism, for example,

start, where the scholarship and human rights practice start.

And if you look at also business and human rights teachers, you often see that they wear

different hats at the same time.

They're scholars, teachers, they may also be activists, they may sit on the boards of

NGOs pushing business and human rights issues.

And I think it has a lot to do with the inherent normativity of human rights.

At least speaking for myself, I would find it, and I know there are scholars who would

disagree with me on that point, but I would find it very difficult to do business and