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Is the potential of involvement in gross human rights abuses handled within our
enterprise as would be a legal compliance issue? Who needs to be involved at
what stage to ensure that this is the case?
If we or those with whom we have business relationships are active in conflictaffected areas, do these situations automatically lead to a more rigorous due
diligence process within the enterprise?
How will we assess the human rights situation and its implications for us in such
conflict-affected areas? On what resources will we draw?
GUIDING PRINCIPLE 24
Where it is necessary to prioritize actions to address actual and potential adverse
human rights impacts, business enterprises should first seek to prevent and mitigate
those that are most severe or where delayed response would make them irremediable.
Q 87. Why does this matter?
There is no hierarchy in international human rights law. Rather, human rights
are treated as indivisible, interdependent and interrelated. However, it may
not always be possible for an enterprise to address all adverse human rights
impact immediately. Many enterprises operate in different contexts and have
complex supply chains and a multitude of partners. They may be at risk of
involvement in a range of adverse human rights impacts, and there may be
legitimate resource and logistical constraints on the ability of the enterprise to
address them all immediately.
Human rights due diligence and remediation processes aim to help enterprises
minimize human rights impact linked to their operations, products and services.
If these impacts cannot reasonably be addressed all at once, the focus must be
on those that would cause the greatest harm to people. That means prioritizing
those impacts that are, or would be, most severe in their scope or scale or
where a delayed response would render them irremediable. As soon as the
most severe impacts are addressed, the enterprise should turn to those with
the next greatest severity and so on until it has addressed all its actual and
potential impacts on human rights (bearing in mind that this is likely to be an
ongoing exercise that adjusts to changing circumstances).
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