Discussion Petitioners assert that the investor-owned Carbon Majors must be held to account. We cite the following as grounds for this assertion: 1. The corporate responsibility to respect human rights is articulated in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights,57 which reflect norms and standards on the responsibility of corporate actors. The Guiding Principles explicitly call on companies to respect human rights.58 As stated in the Guiding Principles, corporate responsibility to respect human rights is not optional—it arises from a global standard of expected conduct that is often reflected in national laws and regulations.59 The Guiding Principles set forth a number of foundational and operational principles concerning the corporate responsibility to respect human rights. Specifically, foundational Principles 11 and 12 are relevant to the Carbon Majors and the impacts of their global operations: Foundational Principle 11: Business enterprises should respect human rights. This means that they should avoid infringing on the human rights of others and should address adverse human rights impacts with which they are involved; and Foundational Principle 12: The responsibility of business enterprises to respect human rights refers to internationally recognized human rights.60 These Principles recognize that the corporate responsibility to respect human rights applies to virtually the entire spectrum of internationally recognized human rights, including those expressed in the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the main instruments through which it has been codified: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, coupled with the principles concerning fundamental rights in the eight ILO core conventions as set out in the Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.”61 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 57 Guiding Principles, supra note 24. International Bar Association Climate Change and Human Rights Task Force Report, Achieving Justice and Human Rights in an Era of Climate Disruption, July 2014, at 147-153, http://www.ibanet.org/PresidentialTaskForceCCJHR2014 (accessed on Apr. 20, 2016). 59 Guiding Principles, supra note 24, at principle 11 at 13. See Sharan Burrow, Sharan Burrow’s Speech to the 2014 United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights, Dec. 2, 2014, http://www.ituc-csi.org/sharan-burrow-sspeech-to-the-2014?lang=en (last accessed June 16, 2015). 60 Guiding Principles, supra note 24, at principles 11-12 at 13-14. 61 Id. at 14. 58 ! 25! ! ! ! ! !