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: Law at the End of the Day

Business and Human Rights Part IV: Foundations--Content of the Corporate Responsibility to Respect

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This Blog Essay site devotes every February to a series of integrated but short essays on a single theme. The Ruminations Series in 2009 produced a month long series of aphoristic (?????????) essays, meant to provoke thought rather than explain it. The hope was that, built up on each other, the series would provide a matrix of thoughts that together might lead the reader in new directions.

For 2010, this site introduces a new series--Business and Human Rights. The series takes as its starting point the issues and questions raised by John Ruggie, the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) on business and human rights, in a global online forum
The U.N. "Protect, Respect, Remedy" framework is made up of three pillars: the State duty to protect against human rights abuses by third parties, including business; the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, which means to avoid infringing on the rights of others; and greater access by victims to effective remedy, judicial and non-judicial. The forum is currently focused on the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, the second pillar of the framework. The forum is divided into sections, each of which contains multiple topics with space for discussion and comment.
New Online Forum for U.N. Business and Human Rights Mandate, United Nations Press Release, New York and Geneva, Dec. 1, 2009. Each of the Essays will consider one of the topics raised in the online consultation. My hope is to help generate discussion and to encourage further discussion of the issues within the framework fo the consultation framework.

Part IV: Foundations--Content of the Corporate Responsibility to Respect (in progress)

The SRSG has described the content of the corporate responsibility to respect human rights in the follwoing way:

Based on the analysis of some 400 public allegations against companies, the SRSG found that companies can affect the entire spectrum of internationally recognized rights, not only a limited subset. In addition to workplace issues, companies can impact health-related rights; rights related to an adequate living standard, including access to housing, food and water; the physical security of the person; the rights of indigenous peoples; and civil rights such as free expression, privacy, peaceful assembly, and a fair trial.
Therefore, constructing a limited list of rights for which companies bear responsibility would fail to capture all of business's potential impacts. All rights are relevant for business, though some may be more so than others in particular circumstances.
Therefore, for the content of the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, companies should look to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; and the core conventions of the International Labour Organization.
Many of these standards have already been implemented through national law in a way that creates direct obligations for companies. Beyond that, the principles these instruments embody are the most universally agreed upon by the international community, and are the main benchmarks by which social actors judge the human rights impacts of companies.
Companies might need to consider additional standards depending on the situation. For example, in conflict-affected areas they should take into account international humanitarian law and policies; and in projects affecting vulnerable groups, for example indigenous peoples or children, standards specific to those communities will be relevant.

United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on business & human rights, content of the corporate responsibility to respect.

Full post as published by Law at the End of the Day on February 04, 2010 (boomark / email).