Children's rights in the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive: the door is open

Maria Pia Bianchetti

Chapter 38 in Sustainable Business in Europe, 2026, pp 497-515 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The increasing influence of business on children's rights has prompted the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child to consistently recommend States to mandate ‘child rights due diligence’ for businesses. This chapter critically examines how the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) addresses children's rights in three parts. First, it proposes a three-level analytical framework for Part I of the Annex to assess the Directive's normative scope from a child rights perspective, with some examples of business conduct related to such rights. The second part focuses on the due diligence obligation, identifies specific provisions relevant for children's rights and discusses their practical implementation. The third part highlights other provisions in the Directive that can support the advancement of children's rights while not child-rights specific. Additionally, the chapter considers the Omnibus proposal's potential to reshape these provisions. The analysis reveals that the CSDDD provides to a certain extent a legal basis for child rights-responsive due diligence and a broader normative scope than initially apparent. The author notes the critical role of implementation measures to realise the potential of the CSDDD to improve corporate accountability for children's rights.

Keywords: Children's Rights; Corporate Sustainability; Child Rights and Business; Due Diligence; EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive; Child Rights Due Diligence; Corporate Accountability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035326891
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035326907.00053 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:23047_41

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().