Also Read
February 2019 |
Fulfilling the State Duty to Protect: A Statement on the Role of Mandatory Measures in a “Smart Mix”
ReadUnder Pillar 1 of the UN Guiding Principles, all states “must protect against human rights abuse within their territory and/or jurisdiction by third parties, including business enterprises”. To do so, states “should consider a smart mix of measures – national and international, mandatory and voluntary – to foster business respect for human rights.”
Yet despite this encouragement to consider them, mandatory measures have not been a central part of the mix considered by states in the initial years of UNGPs implementation, outside of certain reporting requirements. That is now changing, particularly in Europe. A growing number of states are actively considering the use of mandatory due diligence measures to advance business respect for human rights.
In France, the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, the UK, Norway and Switzerland, we see governments and legislatures adopting or exploring mandatory measures as part of a mix of policy tools to incentivize business respect for human rights. In a growing number of cases, these measures go beyond reporting obligations to encompass comprehensive human rights due diligence. Continue reading…
“The UNGPs always envisaged that states would adopt a smart mix of measures – voluntary and mandatory – to ensure that businesses respect human rights. We’ve heard the phrase a lot over the last eight years, but it’s mostly been used to describe voluntary measures and states have generally been less willing to explore the mandatory part of the picture. That is now starting to change. As the company, government and civil society voices highlighted here show, there is a growing consensus that we need to get better at talking about what mandatory measures could look like. At Shift, we have made it a priority to support this conversation.”
Rachel Davis – Vice President of Shift
