Corporate responsibility

The international community is setting standards for corporations in order to mitigate the risk that their activities infringe with human rights standards and standards of international humanitarian law. Businesses are more and more recognizing their legal, moral and commercial obligation to uphold these international standards.

Core principles for corporate responsibility

• Protect: the state's duty is to protect human rights abuses by third parties, including businesses;
• Respect: the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, which means to act with due diligence to avoid infringing on the rights of others and address adverse impacts on human rights;
• Remedy: provide greater access by victims to effective remedies, both judicial and non-judicial.

Guiding principles for corporate responsibility

• Do/cause no harm and address negative impacts of operations;
• Respect all human rights standards;
• Avoid causing/contributing to human rights violations;
• Prevent and mitigate negative impacts by (in)direct relationships;
• Bring policies and processes in line with the guiding principles.

How to implement the guiding principles

• Show policy commitment;
• Identify and address impacts through due diligence;
• Use due diligence to identify, mitigate and to account for how impacts are being addressed.