5 April, 2011The United Nations released its much-anticipated Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights, seeking to provide an authoritative global standard for preventing and addressing the risk of adverse human rights impacts linked to business activities.
GLOBAL: To highlight what steps states should take to better manage business and human rights challenges and to provide a blueprint for companies to respect human rights, on March 24 the United Nations published the Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights (http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/TransnationalCorporations/Pages/Reports.aspx).
The Guiding Principles are the product of six years of research and extensive consultations led by the UN Secretary General's Special Representative for Business and Human Rights, Harvard Professor John Ruggie. The Principles are based on consultations with governments, companies, business associations, civil society, affected individuals and groups, investors and others around the world.
In 2008, Professor Ruggie proposed the "Protect, Respect and Remedy" Framework to better manage human rights problems related to business activities which was unanimously welcomed by the UN Human Rights Council. The Guiding Principles are based on three pillars of the Framework:
- The state's duty to protect human rights
- The corporate responsibility to respect human rights
- The need for greater access to remedy for victims of business-related abuse.
The IMF together with other global union federations actively participated in the consultation process during the preparation of the Guiding Principles, including making a submission on how precarious work systematically undermines human rights. Thanks to these efforts by the global unions and other concerned groups, the Guiding Principles make clear the obligation of companies to respect human rights throughout their supply chains. Also, the Principles clarify that company-based grievance mechanisms 'should not be used to undermine the role of legitimate trade unions in addressing labour-related disputes'.
The UN Human Rights Council will consider formal endorsement of the text at its June 2011 session.