In last week’s blog (found here), I discussed two tools that have come out to fill the need to develop human rights risk assessment. CIDSE a non profit organization that stands for “tougher global justice” recently published a policy paper that discusses a related concept “human rights due diligence.” According to the authors “This CIDSE briefing explains what human rights due diligence is and … how it should be implemented by businesses and the essential role of States in that regard.”
As the report notes, the idea of “human rights due diligence” is a newer concept that has been getting a lot of attention by businesses, civil society and policymakers. Human rights due diligence is one part of the overall risk assessment that a company should perform when undertaking an analysis of how their business affects other stakeholders. In an article that I published earlier this year (which you can fine here), I spend a lot of time discussing these concepts and how they relate: human rights due diligence and human rights risk assessment, as well as how they align with traditional due diligence and risk management concepts. The CIDSE report provides eight recommendations that for integrating the UN Guiding Principles and the Protect, Respect and Remedy Framework into existing business operations and legal structures. The recommendations seemed to be geared mainly at States and their role in protecting communities and individuals from business related human rights challenges. Among the recommendations put forth are requiring states to use the means “at their disposal” to require businesses to incorporate business and human rights issues into their operations. Another recommendation, asks states to strengthen the “regulatory process” to tie the issuance of permits with specific undertakings by businesses in human rights due diligence.
The Report does an excellent job of tying its recommendations to specific parts of the Guidelines and the Protect Framework. Moreover, the recommendations encompass both gradual and ambitious planks for those who would like to move the business and human rights agenda forward. I highly recommend that those who are interested in the policy initiatives that are being discussed now (or will be discussed in the future) to take a look at the report.
The full report can be found here.
