Human Rights-Based Business
The most resilient, responsible, and inclusive businesses in the world utilize a human rights-based approach to manage their impact on people and the planet.
A human rights-based approach turns rhetoric into reality by focusing on the lived experience of affected people (rights holders). It is one thing to commit to respect human rights on paper. It is a very different thing to put affected individuals and communities in a position to exercise their inherent rights. As expectations and regulatory requirements trend upwards, businesses are being pressed to prove their respect for human rights in practice. They are being pressed to share real world stories about accountability and people who have agency. After all, respecting human rights is not only about what businesses say it is about what businesses do. A human rights-based approach is a proven method of implementing human rights. Human rights practitioners utilize a human rights-based approach to turn human rights on paper into real-world practice and progress. It serves as a blueprint for doing the right things, the right way, proactively. Ultimately, a human rights-based approach is the best and only way to prevent harm in even the toughest circumstances and achieve wins for people, the planet, and business.
When businesses utilize a human rights based-approach...
they move beyond saying the right things to do business in a way that overcomes challenges, improves lives, and uplifts communities. They realize untold resilience and readiness and empower people in the process. This approach works because it focuses on people and the realities they encounter. It puts people in a position to take action on their own behalf and protect one another. It treats people as rights holders who are deserving of accountability and agency, rather than bystanders. A human rights-based approach roots out risks from the bottom up – risks that seem insurmountable when working from the top-down.
Human rights-BASED due diligence
Corporate human rights due diligence refers to a process of assessing, responding to, and reporting on business-related human rights risks and impacts. HRDD is not aspirational, it is essential. There are four key elements to HRDD. Utilizing a human rights-based approach during HRDD ensures that findings and responses reflect the real-world realities that affected individuals and communities face. It is not only possible, but imperative to employ a human rights-based approach at every stage. After all, HRDD that is not human rights-based is not human rights due diligence at all:
Assessing actual and potential human rights impacts (Guiding Principle 18)
A business cannot understand their real-world impact on people by simply conducting a desk-based assessment. A human rights-based impact assessment requires meaningful consultation with affected rights holders and concerned stakeholders. This is the only way to understand the business-related concerns and challenges that people experience.
Integrating and acting upon the findings (Guiding Principle 19)
Meaningful consultation is only meaningful if it is acted upon. After listening to the challenges and opportunities that rights holder see, businesses are to prioritize the most salient issues and take action. A human rights-based approach reminds that affected individuals are not to be made bystanders. They are rights holders and key beneficiaries. To ensure that responses are appropriate and effective, they must be crafted and carried out with rights holders.
Tracking responses (Guiding Principle 20)
In the same way that a human rights-based approach designs and implements responses with affected individuals and communities, a human rights-based approach to tracking progress focuses on these same rights holders. While there will always be a push to quantify effectiveness, the most useful measures and lessons are often qualitative insights from people who have gone through a program or participated in change.
Communicating how impacts are addressed (Guiding Principle 21)
Reporting can reflexively focus on reporting frameworks and completely lose sight of the real-world results that corporate respect for human rights is after. A human rights-based approach to reporting brings the focus back to the rights holder and their experiences. It compels reporting that brings people back into the equation, and ideally to the fore.
Human rights-based solutions
In aspiring to respect human rights, businesses are sure to encounter challenges, some of which will feel impossible to overcome. A human rights-based approach is unrivaled in these circumstances. It does require expertise and can be more art than science. Corporate respect for human rights is a game of reckoning with messy realities. This is the domain of human rights practitioners. Fortunately, human rights practitioners around the world are ready and willing to assist business in realizing real world respect for human rights in even the toughest circumstances.
A human rights-based approach reveals dynamics and opportunities that cannot be seen in any other way. It puts affected people – individuals and communities whose insights are unrivaled because they live it – in a position to diagnose the problem and point to possible solutions. These are people who know what will work, what won’t, and why. They see pitfalls and possibilities that don’t exist on paper. They understand the dynamics underlying problems and how to transform them. The results are human rights-based solutions that move the needle in even the most challenging climate; solutions that could not be dreamed up in any other way.
A human rights-based approach to corporate governance
A human rights-based approach can also help to simplify how businesses govern their impact on people and the planet. Corporate social responsibility, sustainability, diversity, equality, and inclusion, it is all ultimately about doing the right thing, ensuring that profit does not come at the expense of people and the planet, and empowering people. This is why human rights exist. When done well, respect for human rights makes businesses more resilient in every way. If businesses focus on respecting human rights everything else falls into place. Human rights are a proven force multiplier. Businesses can save significant time, money, and effort, and avoid the costs of experimental approaches by making human rights the primary consideration that guides all other decisions. Place the responsibility to respect human rights at the center of everything (rather than as one item in a list of corporate responsibilities), make accountability and agency the priority, and readiness and shared prosperity become business as usual.
