Beyond a ‘materiality’ approach to human rights

Measuring human rights against human rights 

When human rights appear on a materiality matrix, they sit alongside issues like environmental protections, transparency, corruption, responsible governance, health and safety, gender, diversity and inclusion, community engagement, consumer protection, accountability, taxation, and so on. The problem is that these are all human rights issues. 

Failing to see them as such mischaracterizes the entire scheme and field. Human rights are about confronting predatory or otherwise harmful conduct; establishing a culture of accountability and stakeholder agency across the full spectrum of issues that impact people’s lives, livelihoods, and well-being. 

The business and human rights agenda encompasses any business-related activity that can adversely impact individuals, communities, and ecosystems. This is about comprehensively addressing salient risks and issues and enacting holistic efforts that rectify harm. These efforts must put rights-holders in a position to protect themselves, their interests and one another from destructive business-related conduct. 

Transparency, environment, non-discrimination, health and safety, inclusion, and community, among others, are not issues that companies should be able to pick and choose from or manage as they please. These are human rights issues which companies have a responsibility to effectively manage and publicly report on, regardless of their quantified significance. 

Materiality may be a game of making top-down decisions based on perceived priorities, but human rights are a very different game. 

Alignment with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) has nothing to do with materiality; rather, it manifests as a clear commitment to the global  business and human rights agenda; the identification of salient risks and issues; meaningful engagement, participation, and remediation protocols; establishing command over the company’s human rights related activities; feedback loops; cultures of accountability; and remediation mechanisms, all of which repositions stakeholders from bystanders into agents, capable of protecting themselves and others. 

See the full commentary @ https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/blog/does-a-materiality-approach-miss-the-mark-on-human-rights/