Business, Human Rights and State Capacity to Regulate in Asia

This project examines the regulatory framework for employment relations within fourAsian countries to explain what factors help to promote (or inhibit) the development oflabour standards established by the United Nations (UN), including the InternationalLabour Organisation (ILO). In particular, the research explains how global North andinternational legal and voluntary attempts to regulate production in the Global Southimpact the actual regulatory regime in four Asian countries with differing levels ofinternal control. The initial hypothesis is that countries which have strong internalcontrol will be more able to enforce a legal framework for employment relations but lessamenable to voluntary codes. Conversely, countries which have weaker, more pluralisticregimes, will have more complex and chaotic application of standards, but also moreagility in adapting to new standards and practices. In practice, it is expected thepatterns may be more complex.Global commodity production and distribution networks operate within tremendouslycomplex regulatory environments. This complexity affects both the firms operatingwithin supply chains and the governments in whose countries labour is employed towork within these chains. The United Nations’ agreement called Global Compact furtheremphasised a responsibility on Multinational Corporations (MNCs) to obey localregulations whilst also committing themselves to promote voluntary codes of bestpractice. This regularly environment is hugely complex, with numerous regulatoryinitiators’, differing content, efficacy, forms of monitoring and enforcement. Add to this,incentives to attract foreign investment, such as free trade zones where some laws aresuspended, developing legislative, judicial and monitoring systems, and developingcountries of the Global South struggle to organise a coherent regulatory regime.Moreover, they complain that outsiders, be they foreign courts, governmentadministrations, UN bodies, MNCs, non-government organisations (NGOs), or foreignand international labour unions, blame them when things go wrong. This researchaddresses this complexity, mapping the various forms of regulations, monitoring andenforcement at the level of individual counties that have traditionally made up theGlobal South.The four countries in this research, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China and Vietnam,represent comparisons of these complexities at several levels, including political system(elected or authoritarian governments), degree of reliance on international capital and/or industrial sector and depth of relations with relevant UN organisations. The researchinvolves documentary analysis from those produced by all forms of organisationsrelevant to the employment practices in the cases, together with interviews and review oflegal judgements.