Algorithmic human resource management (AHRM), the automation or augmentation of human resources-related decision-making with the use of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled algorithms, can increase recruitment efficiency but also lead to discriminatory results and systematic disadvantages for marginalized groups in society. In this paper, we address the issue of equal treatment of workers and their fundamental rights when dealing with these AI recruitment systems. We analyse how and to what extent algorithmic biases can manifest and investigate how they affect workers’ fundamental rights, specifically (1) the right to equality, equity, and non-discrimination; (2) the right to privacy; and, finally, (3) the right to work. We recommend crucial ethical safeguards to support these fundamental rights and advance forms of responsible AI governance in HR-related decisions and activities.

In this paper, I argue that there is an inconsistency between the content of some of the labour-related human rights articulated in documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the obligations ascribed to various actors regarding those rights in the United Nations (UN) Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), in particular those ascribed to corporations. Recognizing the inconsistency, I claim, can help us see some of the moral limitations of both familiar public responses to exploitative labour practices and influential philosophical accounts of the wrong of exploitation. In light of these limitations, I argue that there are reasons to accept a more expansive account of the human rights-related obligations of corporations than that found in the UNGPs, and in particular that we should accept that corporations have obligations to actively contribute to lifting people out of poverty.

The quest for corporate accountability remains unabated in the business and human rights (BHR) field. This paper examines the role of multinational corporations (MNCs) and Business Interest Associations (BIA) as entrepreneurs, antipreneurs and saboteurs in setting human rights standards. Through this conceptualization, this paper argues that corporate accountability remains elusive because of corporate actors’ normative power and influence in the BHR norm contestation. It attributes corporate actors’ influence in the norm contestation to the UN multistakeholder design that sees nonstate actors as partners and stakeholders in setting global human rights standards. This article then argues that to force a norm change in the BHR field, there is a need to rethink the BHR governance model. Corporate actors must be reconceptualized as ‘regulated individuals’ during norm discussions and standard-setting processes.

In September 2023, the trial at Stockholm District Court against Orrön Energy (previously Lundin Energy) and two corporate directors for complicity in war crimes in Sudan between 1999 and 2003, started. The Lundin case is part of a trend of attempts to hold corporations criminally accountable for their alleged involvement in serious human rights abuses and provides a unique opportunity to assess the possibilities of such attempts in relation to the rights of the victims. This article analyzes how human rights obligations and the objectives of reparations for victims are satisfied by Swedish law and practice in the Lundin trial. It shows that while the law allows victims participating in trial to put forward civil claims, it denies this right to the large number of victims not participating, and the decision early in the Lundin proceedings to separate damage claims from the criminal trial has left the participating victims effectively denied reparations.