81
and businesses. Additionally, “some of the measures that have already been adopted
include binding legal and policy requirements, with penalties for non-compliance.”396
i. Foundational Principles of the Corporate Responsibility to
Respect
The corporate responsibility to respect human rights, as the second pillar of
the UNGP-BHR, implements the preambular proclamation in the UDHR that
every individual and every organ of society shall strive by progressive measures
to secure the universal and effective recognition and observance of human
rights.397 To this end, its foundational principles expound on the parameters
of this corporate responsibility, stating first that all business enterprises should
respect human rights.398 These rights, at a minimum, refer to internationallyrecognized human rights, as expressed in the International Bill of Rights and
the International Labour Organization’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles
and Rights at Work.399 To respect these human rights, business enterprises,
including every entity within their value chains under a theory of enterprise
liability, must: a) avoid contributing to adverse human rights impacts, and
address them when they occur; and b) seek to prevent or mitigate adverse
human rights impacts that are directly linked to their operations, products or
services.400 Such is required of all business enterprises, regardless of size, sector,
operational context, ownership, and structure.401 To meet this responsibility,
business enterprises should have appropriate policies and processes, 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; and c) processes to enable
the remediation of any adverse human rights impacts they cause or to which
they contribute.402
396
John Ruggie, Life in the Global Public Domain: Response to Commentaries on the UN Guiding
Principles and the Proposed Treaty on Business and Human Rights, SSRN (2015), available at http://
dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2554726.
397
UDHR, supra note 140, Preamble.
398
UNGP-BHR, supra note 313 (Principle 11).
399
Id. (Principle 12).
400
Id. (Principle 13).
401
Id. (Principle 14).
402
Id. (Principle 15).
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