Human Rights, Poverty Reduction, Opportunities, and the Multinational Enterprise

Emerging Markets

Much of the focus on the relationships between MNEs and human rights has been on the for-profit operations conducted within emerging or less developed economies. The terms emerging markets, developing, less developed, and least developed economies imply some type of economic inferiority when being compared to developed countries. In addition to being less economically developed, there is a tendency for many scholars to consider the moral and legal frameworks found in emerging economies to be inferior. Therefore it has often been advocated emerging markets adapt human rights practices more commonly found in Western liberal democracies or to allow international organizations to enforce and impose international standards as the governments and leadership of the emerging markets are perceived as uninterested, or unable to ensure international human rights standards (e.g., Bernaz, 2013; Fasterling & Demuijnck, 2013; Kobrin, 2009).