Session 2 Flashcards
Corporate responsibility to respect human rights: What is human rights due diligence? (13 cards)
How do HRDD and business due diligence differ from each other?
HRDD focuses on identifying adverse human rights risks in a businesses’ operations and activities (in its supply/ value chain), while business due diligence is a general risk assessment on any risks that may negatively impact the business and is usually focused on financial or product risks to the company.
What are the four elements/ steps of HRDD?
1 - IDENTIFY: Identifying and assessing actual and potential human rights impacts (Impact Assessment);
2 - TAKE ACTION: Integrating and acting upon the findings;
3 - TRACK - Tracking the effectiveness of actions taken;
4 - COMMUNICATE: Communicating how impacts are addressed
How should businesses identify and assess actual and potential human rights impacts?
Through conducting a HRIA which is done continuously and in meaningful consultation with all potentially affected stakeholders
What is required by ‘integration’ in step two of HRDD?
Business ensuring that HRDD is part of all its activities, across all levels of its operations, and consistent with its commitments in its human rights policy
Provide examples of types of communication under HRDD.
In-person meetings; Online dialogues; Consultation with affected stakeholders; formal public reports
(annual reports, CSR reports, online updates, and integrated financial
and non-financial reports)
Can/ Should human rights due diligence or parts of it be carried out by external experts?
Preferably not as companies should know best of their own practices and possible adverse human rights effects and should be able to address them throughout their HRDD
What does a company’s supply chain encompass?
The resources, activities and business relationships that feed into a product or service.
What does a company’s value chain encompass?
The full lifecycle: Extends beyond its supply chain to include the delivery, consumption, and end use of a product or service
What are the parameters/ scope of the corporate responsibility to respect according to the UNGPs? (Who and what does it apply to?)
It applies to all human rights, all enterprises and incorporates the responsibility to act both pre- and post-harm as well as involvement
What three types of involvement is there under RtR?
Causation, contribution and direct link.
‘The responsibility to respect human rights requires that business enterprises:
(a) Avoid causing or contributing to adverse human rights impacts through their own activities, and address such impacts when they occur;
(b) Seek to prevent or mitigate adverse human rights impacts that are
directly linked to their operations, products or services by their business relationships, even if they have not contributed to those impacts.’ (GP 13)
How do you tell contribution and linkage apart under RtR? (Three relevant factors)
Encouragement: whether the company’s actions ‘encourage or motivate an adverse impact by another
entity’
Foreseeability: whether the company ‘could or should have known about the adverse impact or potential
for adverse impact’
Mitigating efforts: whether the company’s activities ‘actually mitigated the adverse impact or decreased the
risk of the impact occurring’
Can certain human rights impacts be prioritized in HRDD? Why (not)?
Yes, the ones that are at most risk of being violated (‘severe’). This does not mean that other possible impacts human rights are to be ignored.
Severity of impacts judged by:
Scale (gravity of the impact)
Scope (number of individuals impacted)
Irremediable character (any limits on the ability to restore those impacted to a situation at least the same as, or equivalent to, their situation before an adverse impact)
What does the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark do?
The Benchmark tracks
Large companies: 230 largest publicly traded companies
3 industries: Agriculture, Apparel, and
Extractives
6 Measurement Themes: commitment, HRDD, remedies, performance, response to serious allegations, transparency
