The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the State duty to protect Human Rights and the State-business nexus

Despite the fact that the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) have specific provisions that are applicable to States to ensure that businesses that are owned or controlled by the State, or that enter into transactions with the State, respect human rights; most scholarship, so far, seems to have focused mainly on the corporate responsibilities of privately owned entities to respect human rights. This article seeks to rectify this apparent gap in scholarship by providing an introduction to what the UNGPs refer to in Principles 4, 5 and 6 as ‘the State-business nexus.’ In this context, this article is composed of five sections and proceeds in the following manner. The first section introduces the coverage of the State-business nexus in the UNGPs. The second section seeks to determine who are the actors to whom the provisions of UNGPs 4, 5 and 6 may be applicable. The third section analyses in detail on Principles 4, 5 and 6 and shows how the UNGPs focus on this issue from three different perspectives. The fourth section examines the content of the State duty to protect human rights in the context of the State-business nexus, while the fifth section concludes.