Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights

On 22 November 2010 I posted a draft of the “Guiding Principles for the Implementation of the UN ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ Framework” on my online consultation forum, available here, under my mandate as Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary General for Business and Human rights. The forum, intended to gather views from a broad range of stakeholders, will remain open until 31 January 2011.

The Guiding Principles elaborate and clarify for companies, states, and other stakeholders how they can operationalize the UN ‘Protect , Respect and Remedy’ Framework, by taking practical steps to address business impacts on the human rights of individuals (learn more about the Framework here). The UN Human Rights Council had endorsed the Framework unanimously in 2008, and asked me to provide this additional concrete guidance. My hope is that stakeholders in every region will take advantage of this opportunity to be heard before I finalize the text of the Guiding Principles. The online forum is a critical complement to the more than 40 in-person consultations I’ve conducted around the world since my mandate began in 2005.

After the forum closes in January, I will submit the final text of the Guiding Principles to the UN for translation, before presenting it formally to the Human Rights Council at its June session.

About the forum

Anybody can access the forum to read the Guiding Principles. In order to post and rate comments, it is necessary to register. Recognizing that there are legitimate reasons why some cannot comment publicly, private correspondence can be submitted to [email protected]. Interested parties can follow developments on the forum via Twitter, @srsgforum. Technical issues with the site should also be referred to [email protected].

For more information about my mandate, please visit my web portal, hosted by the independent Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, found here.

I encourage you to participate in the consultation process. Laws and policies that govern the creation and ongoing operation of business enterprises, such as corporate and securities laws, directly shape business behavior. Yet their implications for human rights remain poorly understood. For example, there is a lack of clarity in corporate and securities law regarding what companies and their officers are permitted, let alone required, to do regarding human rights. Laws and policies in this area should provide sufficient guidance to enable businesses to respect human rights, with due regard to the role of existing governance structures such as corporate boards. As experts in responsible corporate governance you can help to bridge these domains by telling me if you find helpful the guidance we’ve offered to states, businesses and others in this area, and if not, where there is room for improvement.

Background on the UN Protect, Respect and Remedy Framework

In 2008, the Council extended my mandate until 2011, tasking me: to “operationalize” the U.N. “Protect, Respect, Remedy” framework for business and human rights through concrete guidance and recommendations to states, businesses and other actors; and to “promote” the U.N. Framework, coordinating with relevant international organizations and other stakeholders.

The U.N. Framework rests on three distinct yet complementary pillars: the state duty to protect against human rights abuses by third parties, including business, through appropriate policies, regulation, and adjudication; the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, which means to act with due diligence to avoid infringing on the rights of others; and greater access by victims to effective remedy, judicial and non-judicial.