Academic

Business and Human Rights Part XIII--Elaboration: Effectiveness

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. 

The SRSG has emphasized that "the components of human rights due diligence in place is necessary but not sufficient to meeting the corporate responsibility to respect human rights; there must also be guidance to support the effectiveness of those components." United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Business & Human Rights, Elaboration: Effectiveness.

He suggests empamples to drive home the point:

• Companies must internalize the fact that human rights due diligence is not a one-time activity, but constitutes an ongoing, dynamic process. 
• A company?s management of risks to the human rights of individuals and communities must involve meaningful engagement and dialogue with those communities. (See also the page in this forum on consultation.) 
• Because the very purpose of human rights due diligence is for the company to demonstrate that it is meeting its responsibility to respect human rights, a measure of transparency and accessibility to stakeholders will be required. (See also the page in this forum on transparency.) 
• Corporate objectives, policies and systems must be aligned with the company?s human rights policy, and not contradict or undermine it. Integration is one component of human rights due diligence, but should be applied to human rights due diligence broadly.

• Are the above suggestions all equally necessary for a company to meet its responsibility to respect human rights?
• What additional guidance would ensure the effectiveness of human rights due diligence?

Full post as published by Law at the End of the Day on February 14, 2010 (boomark / email).