The UNGPs at 10: Outlook to 2030

Not long after the EU published its long-awaited proposal on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence (see more here) the expected flurry of conversations about what it would mean in practice began. The lack of clarity is likely to continue for some while, as although the proposal being published marked a momentous landmark the EU legislative process, it is likely to mean it is another 18 months or so before the proposal is adopted in final form. 

Until that time, the question arises over what companies should be doing on Business and Human Rights. The answer to that question lies, as it has been for the past 11 years, in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). 

Last July, we reported on the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights' stock-taking exercise of the first decade of the UNGPs (see here). The Working Group's conclusion was that, while the UNGPs had led to significant progress on Business and Human Rights, the next decade needed raised levels of ambition and increased pace of implementation to improve coherence and create greater impact. To assist with this, the Working Group published, in November 2021, its Roadmap for the Next Decade of Business and Human Rights (the Roadmap). 

The Roadmap provides for 8 "action areas", covering topics such as the business responsibility to respect human rights, access to remedy, stakeholder engagement and leverage. Each area contains a number of specific goals (for instance "embed human rights due diligence in corporate governance and business models") and each goal includes helpful suggestions on actions that can be taken by various actors to support those goals, be it states, businesses (including financial institutions and investors), business organisations and civil society organisations. 

Some key takeaways for businesses include: 

• Recognising the inextricable link between climate change, the environment and human rights and the consequently integral role of human rights as part of the concept of "just transition". This means, for instance, considering the human rights implications of any climate transition plans and looking to mitigate any adverse impacts. 
• Taking steps to ensure that human rights are embedded throughout the business and in business culture and strategy, including through executive and governance oversight, analysis of business-model related risks and across all business functions/activities.
• Supporting the adoption and implementation of the UNGPs and similar standards across business relationships and value chains, including in smaller and medium-sized businesses (e.g. through industry associations, capacity building). 
• Ensuring consistency between policy positions and wider business activities (e.g. lobbying and corporate political engagement, litigation etc).
• Improving access to remedy by developing more effective grievance mechanisms, engaging in industry and multi-stakeholder initiatives and harnessing collective leverage to address systemic challenges. 
• Putting stakeholder engagement at the heart of human rights due diligence and remediation processes, particularly as part of designing and implementing operational level grievance-mechanisms. 
• Focusing on outcomes and results rather than inputs and activities as a way of monitoring progress and effectiveness of activities in managing human rights risks, in line with the UNGP goal to "achieve tangible results for affected individuals and communities, and thereby also contribut[e] to a socially sustainable globalization".

For finance companies, the Roadmap particularly emphasizes the "critical role" the sector has to play in speeding and scaling up business respect for human rights overall. It calls in particular for more action on adopting human rights policies, embedding human rights due diligence and grievance management approaches in governance frameworks and investment decision-making processes and engaging investees in constructive dialogue to promote the implementation of the UNGPs. 

All of which provides much food for thought and a long list of potential actions to consider. All of a sudden, 18 months (and the currently proposed two-year transposition period for the EU human rights due diligence proposal) doesn't quite seem so far away...