The Annual Kleh Lecture

Please join us for the Annual Kleh Lecture on Monday, November 17th. Professor Enrique Prieto-Ríos will discuss “UNGPs in Turbulent Times: Systemic Violence and Global Inequality.” Fifteen years after the adoption of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), their promise to rein in corporate abuses remains deeply contested, particularly in contexts marked by armed conflict and structural inequality. While the UNGPs established a shared vocabulary of responsibility among states, corporations, and civil society, their real-world impact in settings shaped by violence and colonial legacies has been limited. This lecture revisits the evolution of the business and human rights agenda, from early attempts to regulate transnational corporations to the recent proliferation of due diligence legislation, and interrogates how the UNGPs both reflect and obscure deeper patterns of global power.