... ,_,...,..,~!:!r.l~=:==--~.-..-··=·====~"===,.......,.,.,__,.,.....,.,......__..,.,. ~,-, ~.=""====~~-~-~=~-~·,=ta:--="..-. Human Rights Standards: 2. How do duty-bearers, i.e., major players in Philippine agribusiness, respect, protect, and fulfill human rights in their respective spheres of influence? From a human rights point of view, the state and business are deemed to be the duty-bearers while the farmers and other people working in rural areas, whether IPs or non-IPs, and who are directly impacted by the companies operations, are the rights-holders in so far as the present discussion is concerned. The duty-bearers are artificial persons in law and have personalities separate and distinct from the individual natural persons comprising them. Being the duty-bearers, it is argued that both state and business have human rights obligations that nevertheless are not exactly the same in scope and context. The state's duties include respecting, protecting and fulfilling47 human rights, which have been attributed with technical meanings, as follows: • Obligation to Respect requires the state to refrain from interfering with the enjoyment of the human right. It prohibits the state from taking any action or imposing any measure that is contrary to the rights guaranteed in law. For this reason, it is sometimes referred to as a "negative" or "prohibitive" obligation. • Obligation to Protect requires the state to actively prevent violations by other actors, such as businesses. • Obligation to Fulfill requires the state to take appropriate legislative, administrative, budgetary, judicial and other measures towards the full realization of the right. This obligation can entail issues such as public expenditure, governmental regulation of the economy, the provision of basic public services and infrastructure, taxation and other redistributive economic measures. 48 On the other hand, the international context of the "business and human rights" agenda could be attributed to the efforts of human rights advocates to hold business enterprises as responsible to respect human rights. It is observed that such international thrust mostly highlights the potential of transnational corporations' processes and operations in having impacts in the observance of human rights. As such, the key word is "accountability of business enterprises." The United Nations Guiding Principles (herein referred to as "UNGP" for brevity) implementing the "Protect, Respect, and Remedy'' Framework categorically described business enterprises' responsibility to respect as follows: "The responsibility to respect human rights requires that business enterprises: (a) Avoid causing or contributing to adverse human rights impacts through their own activities, and address such impacts when they occur; (b) Seek to prevent or mitigate adverse human rights impacts that are directly linked to their operations, products or services by their business relationships, even if they have not contributed to those impacts. "49 The UNGP has further maintained that in order to meet their responsibility to respect human rights, business enterprises should have in place policies and processes appropriate to their size and circumstances, including: (a) A policy commitment to meet their responsibility to respect human rights; (b) A human rights due diligence process to identify, prevent, mitigate and account for how they address their impacts on human rights; 47 Asia Pacific Forum & Center for Economic and Social Rights (January 2015) Defending Dignity: A Manual for National Human Rights Institutions on Monitoring Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. 48 Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (2005) Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights: Handbook for National Human Rights Institution. New York and Geneva 49 Principle 13 of the UNGP 27