Obviously, international organizations such as the UN, have viewed corporate social responsibility as a matter best left to self-regulation by corporations themselves.
The idea that any supervision of corporate compliance with Human Rights standards can be reliably carried out on a voluntary basis, by the companies themselves, is of course, absurd.
In 2003, the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights introduced a proposal called “Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights”, which attempted to establish principles that companies must respect in the field of human rights, labour law, environmental protection, consumer protection, prevention of corruption etc. Importantly, compliance with these principles would potentially not be left as a voluntary measure by corporations, but rather, they would be legally obligated to comply.
While this would be an incredibly important step towards imposing accountability on corporations for their activities, it does not address the incomparable power of multinationals as non-state political actors.
International law identifies non-state actors primarily as armed rebel groups which do not recognize, challenge, or seek to overthrow the existing state authority.
Now, if an armed faction within a country that rises up to challenge the state is considered a non-state actor which threatens the stability of a state, surely multinational corporations (whose economic power dwarfs any government in the developing world) should be considered non-state actors as well, who can, and who do, destabilize the states where they operate.
Why should an armed faction of citizens within a country who seek to impose their will upon the state be subject to international law, but a foreign entity which seeks to impose its will upon the e state by weapons of finance, predatory investment, debt, and economic blackmail?
When you have massive corporations essentially telling a country, “either you comply with our demands, or we will punish your economy, deprive you of trade, deprive you of technology, and so on”, that is a level of aggression no armed faction could ever equal.