In this thesis, I investigated how transnational corporations operate - especially in the Global
South - and are regulated, through international law, coloniality, and neoliberalism, and the
dynamics of human rights movements that strain these power relations. I explore the conflict
between two languages of human rights, based on two types of proposals for accountability of
these companies in relation to human rights violations, those based on soft law instruments and
those based on a binding treaty. Analyzing these languages in depth, I investigated the
challenges and limits of the production of human rights in an international dimension, based on
the observation of the operational nuances of global civil society in the impact on the
construction of effective mechanisms of corporate accountability for human rights violations.
The focus is on advocacy movements at the United Nations in the struggle for a binding Treaty
on the subject, as well as on the political resistance of the Global North to the project. In this
sense, the thesis explores the tension in the production of human rights in a world under
corporate governance. I found that the search for these normative resources created what is now
generically called the “Business and Human Rights” agenda, a term by which a new area of
technical, practical and theoretical action in Law has been recognized. I highlight the approval
of resolution 26/9, now known as the “treaty resolution”, and analyze the successive drafts of
the treaty, identifying that the proposals do not necessarily consider international geopolitics
and the historical relations of imperialism, dependence and coloniality between the North and
Global South States. When confronting - or adapting to - the capitalist mode of production, the
debate on the draft Treaty on Business and Human Rights becomes a key point of this historical
time, given the announcement of climate changes considered irreversible connected to human
impact, and with the deepening of extreme poverty on the planet. In this sense, the research
sought to contribute to the relevant ongoing discussions, allowing a deeper understanding of
the connotations and implications of different approaches in favor of imposing human rights
obligations on corporations.
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