INTEGRATING HUMAN RIGHTS

1. Guide for Integrating Human Rights into Business Management

The Guide for Integrating Human Rights into Business Management is an online tool produced jointly by the Business Leaders Initiative on Human Rights (BLIHR), the UN Global Compact and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Now in its second edition, it offers practical guidance to companies wanting to take a proactive approach to human rights within their business operations and is of use primarily to business leaders and managers in large and medium-sized enterprises, private and state-owned, who would like to develop their understanding of human rights in business practice. Also available are a series of downloadable PDF extracts covering the main areas of the guide. The series covers Short Introduction, Global Business Case, Strategy, Policies, Processes and Procedures, Capacity and Capability and Tracking Performance.

2. Human Rights Translated

Human Rights Translated: A Business Reference Guide explains human rights concepts in the language of business through the use of examples and suggested practical actions. The publication is a joint product of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, the International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the UN Global Compact Office.

3. Country Risk Assessment Reports

The Danish Institute for Human Rights Country Risk Assessment (CRA) is a comprehensive report on the human rights risks to business. As well as in-depth descriptions of legal protections and violation risks in practice, the report includes detailed recommendations, topic-specific focal areas and extensive background information on the country in question. The mapping contained in the Country Risk Assessment provides an invaluable guide to ensuring that business operations contribute to development, especially for vulnerable groups. The objective of the CRA is to determine areas where companies are at risk of human rights violations—both direct and indirect—due to ineffective laws or poor practices in the country of operation.

4. Human Rights Matrix - Business Leaders Initiative on Human Rights

The Global Business Initiative on Human Rights is proud to announce the release of the beta 1.0 version of the Human Rights Matrix. The BLIHR Human Rights Matrix is a web-based, freeware self-assessment tool. It is designed to support your company in understanding human rights in relation to your own policies, procedures and initiatives. It will help you SIMPLIFY, VISUALISE, ASSESS AND MANAGE your human rights programs and performance. It is business friendly with built-in human rights expertise and knowledge.

The matrix has two dimensions. First, it is structured around the ‘Essential’ and ‘Beyond Essential’  steps a business can take to develop and implement its human rights strategy. Second, the interface is designed so that the tool can be completed by business functions and common policy areas within that business function. In the tool these are called ‘Business Areas’ and ‘Business Sub-Areas’. The tool supports you to make an assessment and substantiate your assessment with information about your own policies, practices and initiatives. 

The tool was originally conceived by the Business Leaders Initiative on Human Rights. Please download a PDF about the Matrix.

5. Policy Portal on the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre Website

This page links to statements by companies that explicitly refer to human rights, that BHRRC are aware of. Policy statements that refer/apply only to the company's employees or suppliers are not included in these listings.

6. Human Rights Compliance Assessment - The Danish Institute on Human Rights

The HRCA is a diagnostic tool, designed to help companies detect potential Human Rights violations caused by the effect of their operations on employees, local residents and all other stakeholders. The interactive web-based computer programme allows each company to select questions in the database to suit their type of business and area of operations.

7. Human Rights Impact Assessment- IBLF/IFC/UNGC

Revised Guide to Human Rights Impact Assessment and Management (HRIAM), launched in 2010 by IBLF jointly authored with the International Finance Corporation and the UN Global Compact. Click here to access the Guide. You can also download the booklet version of the Guide in all UN languages here

8. Human Rights Accountability Guide

Human rights belong also within the values and culture of any business and this accountability guide demonstrates, based on legal precedent and research within specific BLIHR member companies, how the links between human rights and good corporate governance and business ethics can be made. The publication was written by Chip Pitts, BLIHR Advisor, and lecturer, Stanford Law School, and John F. Sherman, III, Deputy General Counsel of National Grid (retired) and Senior Fellow, Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

9. Global Reporting Initiative: Good practice note on Human Rights reporting

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is a network-based organization that has pioneered the development of the world’s most widely used sustainability reporting framework and is committed to its continuous improvement and application worldwide.

10. Red Flags

Red Flags communicates, in simple, clear terms, the changing nature of liability risk, based on the latest research into recent case law. It provides a guide for law-abiding companies as to how the expectations for compliance are changing. A Red Flag is a warning of heightened risk. The Red Flags pamphlet and web site provide basic information about the potential for litigation, based on actual legal actions involving businesses or business people and international crimes. Drawing on publicly available information concerning past or present case law, these Red Flags are intended as warnings of liability risk.

11. Embedding Human Rights

The series explores the practical application of the Global Compact’s human rights Principles using case studies and offers detailed examples of what businesses from all over the world are doing to implement human rights within their own operations and spheres of influence, and how they are doing it. The most recent edition is linked above.

12. BASESwiki

BASESwiki aims to help Business And Society Explore Solutions to the grievances and disputes that impact their relationships. This online community and resource is built by and for its users. It provides a place to share information and learning about non-judicial grievance mechanisms around the world including where they are; how they work; who can use them; experts that can support them; outcomes of dispute resolution processes; and research/analysis about mechanisms and processes.

13. Embedding Rights Compatible Grievance Processes for External Stakeholders Within Business Culture

A report by Senior Fellow John Sherman for the Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School on remedy and corporate culture in the mining industry.

14. A Human Rights Management Framework

This poster — launched in 2007 and updated in 2010 — captures key good business and human rights management practices that are elaborated in more detail in A Guide for Integrating Human Rights Into Business Management as well as in the International Business Leaders Forum publication, Human Rights: It Is Your Business. (UNGC/BLIHR/IBLF/OHCHR, revised 2010 with GBI). Available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish

15. The State of Play of Human Rights Due Diligence: Anticipating the Next Five Years

Published by the Institute for Human Rights and Business, this publication reviews how human rights due diligence processes - which involve developing policies, assessing impacts, integrating into management practices, and tracking and monitoring performance - are being taken up by 24 prominent companies from different industry sectors and from different parts of the world.

16. How to do Business with Respect for Human Rights: A Guidance Tool for Companies - Global Compact Network Netherlands

This guidance tool is the result of lessons learnt from a Business and Human Rights Initiative led by the local network working with ten Dutch companies. It aims to help companies consider and implement human rights due diligence.