23 GUIDING PRINCIPLE 15 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; (c) Processes to enable the remediation of any adverse human rights impacts they cause or to which they contribute. Q 18. Why are policies and processes required if this is just a question of avoiding harm? Respecting human rights is not a passive responsibility: it requires action on the part of businesses. It is relatively easy for an enterprise to say that it respects human rights and it may genuinely believe that this is the case. But to make that claim with legitimacy, an enterprise needs to know and be able to show that it is indeed respecting human rights in practice. That, in turn, requires it to have certain policies and processes in place. The Guiding Principles define these as: a statement of policy commitment, a human rights due diligence process and processes to enable remediation. Chapter II elaborates on the factors an enterprise should take into consideration in developing these policies and processes and ensuring that they collectively meet the objective of enabling it to manage its human rights risks effectively. Specifically, section A elaborates on the policy commitment, section B elaborates on human rights due diligence and section C elaborates on remediation. Finally, section D elaborates on issues and challenges arising in particular contexts. Q 19. What makes policies and processes “appropriate to size and circumstances”? There is no single answer to this question. It will depend on all the factors discussed under Guiding Principle 14, with the most attention due to the severity of the enterprise’s adverse human rights impact.