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2 results

  • 10 - The UN Guiding Principles on BHR: Foundations, Contemplations, Critique

  • from Part IV - Corporate Human Rights Accountability
  • Florian Wettstein, Universität St Gallen, Switzerland
  • Book:
    Business and Human Rights
    Published online:
    05 March 2022
    Print publication:
    24 March 2022, pp 185-205

  • Summary

    This chapter engages with the two main instruments resulting from the mandate of the UN Special Representative on BHR (SRSG) between 2005 and 2011, namely the UN Protect, Respect and Remedy Framework and the UN Guiding Principles on BHR (UNGPs). The UN Framework was published in 2008 and establishes the conceptual foundation upon which the UNGPs are built. The UNGPs, on the other hand, can be interpreted as the operationalization of the UN Framework. After distinguishing the SRSG's approach from the earlier UN Draft Norms, the chapter discusses the three pillars of the UN Framework and the UNGPs, consisting of the state duty to protect human rights, the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, and access to remedy. Subsequently, it engages in a critical assessment of the UNGPs, outlining both the key achievements and the main criticism of the UNGPs. Such criticism aims at the principled pragmatism underlying the UNGPs, the foundational role of social expectations, the UNGPs’ lack of enforcement, and the distribution of responsibility between government and companies.

  • The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and conflict-affected areas: state obligations and business responsibilities

  • Rachel Davis
  • Journal:
    International Review of the Red Cross / Volume 94 / Issue 887 / September 2012
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    10 October 2013, pp. 961-979

  • The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights provide authoritative guidance for states and businesses on how to prevent and address business-related human rights harms, including in conflict-affected areas. States need to explore a more innovative range of policy and regulatory options in such situations, whether they are engaging with cooperating companies or dealing with uncooperative ones. Companies need to be able to know and show that they can operate with integrity – and avoid being involved in gross abuses of human rights – and that their risk assessment, mitigation, and remediation processes take full account of the potential risks to affected stakeholders, not just risks to the business.