This unique collection gathers together important instruments dealing with the relationship between business and a range of topics such as labour rights, security issues, environmental protection, anti-corruption, good governance, poverty alleviation and development, which all have important human rights dimensions. The premise for the collection is that business has both the responsibility and the opportunity to respect and support human rights. Selected instruments cover various stages of business involvement with human rights issues, spanning codes of conduct, monitoring, reporting,...

Should companies voluntarily contribute to the social good beyond what is legally mandated to them? Some have argued that businesses should only follow the law and the signals of markets.

The issue of corporate responsibilities has had a tumultuous history at the United Nations. When the Human Rights Council unanimously endorsed John Ruggie's Guiding Principles in June 2011, it was the first time that the UN stated authoritatively its expectations in the area of business and human rights. This volume captures this special moment in time: a moment of taking stock of a successfully concluded UN Special Representative mandate (2005-2011) and of preparing for the massive task of following up with more operational guidance, effective governance mechanisms and sound theoretical...

Although recent scholarship has increasingly situated the Qur'ān in the historical context of Late Antiquity, such a perspective is only rarely accompanied by the kind of microstructural literary analysis routinely applied to the Bible. The present volume seeks to redress this lack of contact between literary and historical studies. Contributions to the first part of the volume address various general aspects of the Qur'ān's political, economic, linguistic, and cultural context, while the second part contains a number of close readings of specific Qur'ānic passages in the light...