Contract as an Instrument Achieving Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility Goals

Abstract

As a positive influence of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines, in the last years many multinational companies have adopted practices and standards of protection of human rights and the environment. However, these practices have proven to be insufficient when looking at the harmful events involving human rights and environmental resources, which seems even more problematic in the current context of sanitary and socioeconomic crisis derived from the covid-19 pandemic. On the other hand, these past few years have also seen the adoption of legal provisions on non-financial communications of large enterprises, some sectorial regulations at the EU level and national laws on human rights and environmental due diligence duties, which could help to overcome the situation described above. This article aims at analysing whether and how, in the current and future legal framework, contractual instruments can contribute to the goal of human rights and environmental protection as regards business activities and how important their role can be in terms of sustainability and corporate social responsibility.