Human Rights Due Diligence

Human rights due diligence is at the core of the international movement for corporate accountability and has been endorsed by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Thus, this standard is increasingly looked to by member states for implementing the corporate responsibility to respect human rights. Generally, human rights due diligence is understood as a concept whereby corporations should ensure that they are not directly or indirectly contributing to human rights violations in their operations and through their relationships.

Project Description

We have commissioned an Expert Team to formulate legal and policy recommendations to governments on ways to promote due diligence to prevent, remedy and mitigate adverse human rights impacts. The Expert Team will develop a survey methodology (“Survey”) that will be sent to various legal experts from around the world. This select group of legal experts will provide examples of ways in which different states use regulatory authority to mandate or encourage businesses to engage in due diligence activity in the human rights area, other areas that are akin to human rights (e.g. labor rights), or otherwise provide useful analogs due to well-established corporate compliance practices (e.g. anti-corruption). Throughout this research process, private consultations will be held in various jurisdictions for our experts to meet with local experts, legal practitioners and civil society leaders. These consultations enable us to gain valuable inputs into our project, to promote the findings and to aide in bringing together diverse legal practitioners with local NGOs.

The Project expects that the research will demonstrate that, in appropriate circumstances, states may use regulatory authority to encourage and even mandate due diligence activities in the human rights field. In doing so, they may choose to specify the precise due diligence steps that enterprises should take, along the lines currently being followed in a number of states in such diverse fields as human rights, environmental protection, anti-corruption, money laundering, labor rights and civil rights. The Project’s final recommendations to individual states for new governmental due diligence initiatives will encourage the adoption of “best practices” in current use. The recommendations will also take into account differences among legal systems and cultures, varying levels of economic development, and other distinguishing factors identified in the survey responses.

Project Timeline

April 2012-August 2012: Survey methodology released, Consultation period

• EU Consultation – Copenhagen – April 23^rd- 24^th, 2012

• US/Canada/Mexico Consultation – Washington DC – June 25^th, 2012

• Asia/Australia Consultation – Hong Kong – August 10^th-11^th, 2012

• Latin America Consultation – TBD - TBD

Initial findings presented at ICAR Second Annual Meeting – Washington DC – September 6^th-7^th, 2012

September 2012-Novemeber 2012: Drafting phase

December 2012 - Report Release

Human Rights Due Diligence Project Experts

Prof. Anita Ramasastry

Anita Ramasastry is the D. Wayne and Anne Gittinger Professor of Law at the University of Washington School of Law; She has worked in the field of business and human rights for more than a decade. Her research focuses on the role of economic actors in conflict affected areas and weak governance zones. From 2009-2011, she was a senior advisor in the International Trade Adminstration of the US Department of Commerce. In 2008, she was a Fulbright Scholar at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland Galway, where her research focused on business and human rights in armed conflict Previously she has served as an advisor to the International Commission of Jurists Expert Panel on Corporate Complicity; She was the project lead for the Commerce, Crime and Conflict Project, sponsored by Fafo Institute of Applied International Studies in Norway. The Commerce Crime and Conflict Study assessed the status of civil and criminal liability for businesses in 16 countries with respect to serious human rights violations occurring in host country jurisdictions. Ramasastry teaches international business transactions, commercial law, law and development and comparative and international law.

Mark Taylor

Mark B. Taylor is a Senior Researcher at the Fafo Institute for Applied International Studies in Oslo. Mark’s areas of work include regulatory and policy responses to violence and conflict. Mark has extensive experience of policy processes, including as an expert facilitator of consultations led by the UN SRSG on Business and Human Rights on the issue of state responses to business in conflict (2009-2010), as well as a participant in multi-stakeholder consultations at the OECD on responsible supply chain management in conflict-affect and high risk zones (2010). A former Managing Director at the Fafo Institute, Mark represents Fafo as a founding member of the Center for American Progress’ Just Jobs Network and is a Senior Advisor to Global Witness, London, in their campaign Ending Impunity. Mark began his work life as a journalist and has worked as a human rights analyst for non-governmental organizations, business, governments and the United Nations. Mark is Editor of the The Laws of Rule blawg www.lawsofrule.net. He holds a B.A. (honours) in Religious Studies from McGill University, in Montreal and an LL.M (cum laude) in Public International Law from Leiden University, The Netherlands (1996), where he is presently completing a mid-career PhD in International Criminal Law. A full list of publications can be found here. http://www.fafo.no/pers/bio/mta.htm

Prof. Olivier de Schutter

Olivier De Schutter has been the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food since May 2008. He currently is teaching human rights and EU law at Columbia University, as well as at the Catholic University of Louvain, and at the College of Europe (Natolin). Between 2002 and 2006, he chaired the EU Network of Independent Experts on Fundamental Rights, a high-level group of experts which advised the European Union institutions on fundamental rights issues. Since 2004, and until his appointment as the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, he was the General Secretary of the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) on the issue of globalization and human rights.

Prof. De Schutter’s most recent book is International Human Rights Law (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010). He received his Ph.D from the University of Louvain and LL.M from Harvard Law School.

Robert C. Thompson

Robert C. Thompson is a lawyer who lives in New York City. Educated at Harvard College and Harvard Law School (Class of 1967), he worked for the law firm of Choate, Hall & Stewart and Boston for five years and then entered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the following eleven years, reaching the rank of Associate General Counsel. In 1984, he joined the firm of Graham & James in San Francisco as a partner, and in 1992 became a partner in the San Francisco office of LeBouef, Lamb, Greene & MacRae (now Dewey & LeBoeuf). He was the chairman of the international environmental group of each of those firms. Following his retirement in 2000, he has devoted his time to international human rights matters.