Article 28: Entitlement to a social and international order in which these rights can be fully realized
Helpful
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
Article 28 names a condition, a just and cooperative international and social order, that the Declaration's other rights need in order to function, rather than describing a new entitlement of its own. Legal scholarship treats it, with Articles 29 and 30, as the closing frame of the document rather than a freestanding right with its own subject matter. That makes it hard to find a corporate lever not already captured under the articles on expression, association, political voice and access to science. The closest genuine cases are indirect. Multinational companies book roughly half their foreign profits in tax havens, narrowing the tax base governments need to build this order, and pressure from the U.S. government produced the OECD agreement announced in January 2026 that shields American multinationals from the global minimum tax and ongoing scope fights inside the still-unfinished UN treaty on business and human rights. Neither is a decisive or primary lever, and no shareholder-resolution record targets this article specifically.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
A few corporate practices, such as profit-shifting to tax havens that narrows the resources governments need to build a cooperative international order, touch what this article names, but Article 28 does not point to a distinct corporate conduct lever beyond the rights it sits atop.
Corporate lobbies have pressed to widen the scope of the UN business and human rights treaty, and multinationals shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions; this is thin, indirect evidence, not a primary block on a freestanding right.
1 and 1, higher of the two, gives Helpful
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights at 70: 30 Articles on 30 Articles - Article 28, OHCHR, 2018-12
- Under U.S. Pressure, OECD Agrees to Deal Allowing Continued Tax Abuse by Big U.S. Corporations, FACT Coalition, 2026-01
- Corporate Lobbies Seek to Expand Binding Treaty's Scope to 'All Business Enterprises' - Why It's Problematic, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, 2025-2026
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Monitors and criticizes corporate lobbying inside the UN Binding Treaty on Business and Human Rights negotiations, including efforts to broaden the treaty's scope in ways the Campaign says would dilute cross-border accountability.
2 campaigns on record
Exempt U.S.-headquartered corporations from key elements of the OECD's Pillar Two global minimum tax, on the argument that the United States already taxes the foreign profits of its multinationals robustly.
Result: The OECD announced on 5 January 2026 that U.S.-headquartered corporations will continue to be exempt from key elements of the global minimum tax regime. A safe harbour shielding American companies from parts of Pillar Two had been due to expire at the end of 2025; the announcement modifies and extends it, which the FACT Coalition reads as effectively exempting American companies from the global minimum tax.
The FACT Coalition calls the deal a setback that lets large U.S. corporations go on benefiting from tax havens beyond what the existing global minimum tax standard permits. It cites research by the EU Tax Observatory finding that American corporations book around one-half of their total foreign profits in tax havens. Nothing we opened records a change of course since the announcement.
Keep the proposed UN legally binding instrument focused on transnational corporations and the enterprises in their value chains, resisting the corporate push to widen its scope to all business enterprises, which the campaign argues would let transnational corporations deflect responsibility and escape cross-border liability.
Result: The Global Campaign published a paper on 13 December 2024, around the tenth session of the Open-Ended Intergovernmental Working Group, arguing that widening the instrument to all businesses, including state-run enterprises with no transnational character, would severely undermine it. The paper reads Human Rights Council Resolution 26/9 against the corporate reading: its phrase 'other business enterprises' is defined in a footnote as enterprises with a transnational character, which excludes businesses operating only within national borders.
The treaty is still under negotiation and nothing we opened shows this push changing its text. Reporting from the same tenth session describes the negotiations advancing despite the presence of corporate lobbies, with states working through the articles on prevention, remedy, legal liability, jurisdiction, limitation and applicable law and closing the session by adopting the draft report and recommendations by consensus.
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is Universal Declaration of Human Rights's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.