Dr Marija Jovanovic, Lecturer in Law at the University of Essex, published a new chapter titled ‘The Business Sector and the Rights to Work and Just and Favourable Conditions of Work’ in The Cambridge Companion to Business and Human Rights Law.

The collection was edited by Ilias Bantekas (Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar) and Michael Ashley Stein (Harvard Law School, Massachusetts), and was published in September 2021 by Cambridge University Press.

Marija’s chapter explains the role and responsibility of the business sector in securing the rights to work and just and favourable conditions of work by clarifying the origins, legal nature, scope, and enforcement of obligations placed upon corporate actors.

It explores the differences between the role of businesses and that of states in safeguarding these rights and seeks to establish whether any obligations placed upon business actors are owed to individuals employed by their subsidiaries and suppliers outside of their country of domicile.

The chapter reflects on the three modalities of framing obligations of the business sector to secure the rights to work and just and favourable conditions of work in today’s globalised economy. It also considers whether states have – or should have – an international obligation to enact and enforce legislation that enables individuals from other jurisdictions to seek redress for the violations of the two rights by their corporate nationals.

Marija’s contribution and the further twenty-four chapters of the Companion are intended to serve as both a specialist guide to businesses, states, and consumer organisations and civil society at large in their pursuit of business and human rights related actions and policies, as well as a comprehensive textbook for business and human rights modules.