IHRB Programmes: Due Diligence

The concept of human rights due diligence has been advanced by the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary General on Business and Human Rights, Professor John Ruggie. It was first set out in 2008 by the Special Representative as the central requirement of the ‘Corporate Responsibility to Respect’ human rights – part of the UN endorsed ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ framework on business and human rights. Many of the Guiding Principles put forward by the Special Representative for operationalizing the framework also draw on the due diligence concept.

In June 2010, the Institute for Human Rights and Business published its State of Play report on human rights due diligence, which examined how 23 companies had interpreted the concept and described the efforts made to apply it in practice. The Institute is seeking to advance human rights due diligence methodology through its thematic work on natural resources, conflict and migration.

The Institute continues to work with a broad range of businesses, States, civil society and trade unions to push forward shared understandings of what effective human rights due diligence means in practice for particular business sectors and for companies operating in particular contexts. Governments themselves can define such requirements under national law, in particular in relation to high-risk products or countries of origin, and Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives can play an essential role in clarifying the appropriate response in situations where international human rights standards may conflict with local law or local practice.

One of the main areas of both human rights and business risk lies in the contractual relationships businesses have with each other, and with States and State entities. These relationships range from Joint Venture agreements, to Mergers and Acquisitions, Public Private Partnerships, Host Government Agreements, Strategic Supplier arrangements, End-User and Licensing agreements.

A key challenge for the future is to expand the application of human rights due diligence principles to contracting processes. The Institute is developing work in this area that follows two strands:

• Direct engagement with companies to analyse existing non-financial and non-technical due diligence in contractual relationships and the gap that human rights needs to fill. An updated ‘State of Play’ report is planned for 2012 in collaboration with the members of the Global Business Initiative for Human Rights (link) as well as other businesses willing to share such commercial information on a confidential basis.
• Direct engagement with a number of governments in an effort to understand and clarify their own human rights duties when contracting with private entities through public procurement (which can represent at least 15% of GDP in many countries).