For several decades, civil society has sought to impose greater responsibility on companies for cross-border social wrongs. Multiple legal subfields and initiatives have emerged to take on this work: corporate social responsibility (CSR); business and human rights (BHR); responsible business conduct codes; environment, social, and governance (ESG) standards; and corporate due diligence schemes, among them. These many projects have culminated in national legislation across a range of jurisdictions imposing reporting and compliance requirements on companies, as well as in the development of soft law standards. Despite these efforts, international treaty initiatives to create binding obligations on companies and to require them to adopt certain human rights principles have made limited progress.

几十年来，民间社会一直试图让企业对跨境社会错误承担更大的责任。多个法律子领域和倡议已经出现来承担这项工作：企业社会责任（CSR）；商业与人权（BHR）；负责任的商业行为准则；环境、社会和治理（ESG）标准；其中包括企业尽职调查计划。这些项目最终形成了一系列司法管辖区的国家立法，对公司提出报告和合规要求，并制定了软法律标准。尽管做出了这些努力，但为公司规定具有约束力的义务并要求它们采用某些人权原则的国际条约倡议取得的进展有限。