The Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human Rights: A Status Review

Abstract

This article provides a critical analysis of developments from 2011 to date relating to the Second Pillar of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the corporate responsibility to respect human rights. The article first briefly contextualises the corporate responsibility to respect human rights as articulated by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights with regard to international human rights law as it currently stands. It then describes and analyses new norms and emerging practices in six areas where the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights call for a response from business and governments: human rights due diligence, corporate policies on human rights, human rights impact assessment, remediation of corporate human rights abuses, supply chain responsibility and transparency, and corporate reporting of human rights impacts. Throughout, the article includes a focus on examples from Asia and Europe. The article concludes by cautioning the need for continuing evaluation of the effectiveness of current approaches to implementing the UN Guiding Principle in securing respect for human rights in practice and the validity of their underlying assumptions.

Keywords: Human rights, corporate responsibility to respect human rights, UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, human rights due diligence, human rights impact assessment, non-financial reporting, supply chains, sustainability, Asia, Europe, European Union, Council of Europe