BUSINESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS / Šturma, Mozetic (eds)

on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in the midst of 2017, emphasize the role of States-party in providing a legal framework to limit as well as increasingly promote business commitment with human rights. Although this document deals with the state’s performance in more detail, it brings an important focus to partnerships and also to the interrelationships between State and business enterprises. In fact, such Comment provides valuable warnings upon new relationships between state and business practices that have very significant effects on public social security policies. It is in this document that one can more clearly see state actions that can generate large-scale adverse impacts if social policies are not effective. Firstly, the document draws attention to the phenomenon of privatizations of essential social security services. Certainly, the act of privatizing public services, per se , is not forbidden. Moreover, the document encourages the good relationship between the public and private sectors to ensure the best conditions for the implementation of human rights. However, when the privatization process occurs in the areas of social insurance, health or even education, in fact the concerns increase because of the social significance of these services. Also, the risks of corruption are said to be highly detrimental to the purposes of human rights. Thus, State regulation needs to address not only the business enterprise’s engagement with the human rights agenda, but it must also take care of the deviations that may occur – which are abundantly occurring – when private interests predominate in associations with public goods, such as social security services.

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