International Journal of Multidisciplinary Evolutionary Research  |  ISSN (Print): 3051-3502  |  ISSN (Online): 3051-3510  |  Double-Blind Peer Review  |  Open Access  |  CC BY 4.0

Current Issues
     2026:7/2

International Journal of Multidisciplinary Evolutionary Research

ISSN: 3051-3502 (Print) | 3051-3510 (Online) | Open Access

Shared Responsibility and Multi-Jurisdictional Alignment in Global Supply Chain Governance

Full Text (PDF)

Open Access - Free to Download

Download Full Article (PDF)

Abstract

The year 2021 marked an inflection point in the regulation of global supply chains. Within a twelve-month period, Germany adopted the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act, Norway enacted the Transparency Act, the European Parliament called on the Commission to table binding due diligence legislation, the United States signed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act into law, and the United Kingdom Supreme Court permitted a parent company negligence claim to proceed in Okpabi v Royal Dutch Shell. These developments coincided with the tenth anniversary of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and with a pandemic that exposed the brittleness of lean, geographically dispersed production networks. This paper argues that the resulting governance architecture is best characterised not as a transition from voluntary to mandatory regulation, but as the uncoordinated distribution of a single regulatory function across many jurisdictions and many actors. Drawing on the shared responsibility literature in international law and on global value chain theory, the paper develops a five-part typology of multi-jurisdictional misalignment: substantive, scalar, temporal, evidentiary, and remedial. It applies the typology to four sites of contestation, namely Xinjiang-linked commodities, cobalt sourcing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, ready-made garments in South Asia, and pandemic-era medical goods. The paper concludes that alignment should be pursued through interoperability rather than harmonisation, and proposes four design principles: a common due diligence core with jurisdictional variation confined to enforcement, conditional safe harbours tied to verified conduct rather than documentary compliance, mandatory allocation of remedial capacity to affected rights-holders, and structured participation for producer states whose exclusion from standard-setting currently converts due diligence into a mechanism of exclusion.

How to Cite This Article

Michael Ominyi, Ngonadi Uchechi, Cyril Chimelie Anichukwueze, Blessing Chika Jones (2021). Shared Responsibility and Multi-Jurisdictional Alignment in Global Supply Chain Governance . International Journal of Multidisciplinary Evolutionary Research (IJMER), 2(2), 131-147. DOI: https://doi.org/10.54660/IJMER.2021.2.2.131-147

Export Citation:

BibTeX RIS EndNote

Share This Article: