The three fundamental pillars of the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights are protect, respect, and remedy. These pillars establish a comprehensive framework for governments and businesses to address and prevent human rights abuses within corporate operations.
Understanding the Three Pillars
The Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), unanimously endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council in 2011, provide a globally recognized standard for preventing and addressing the risk of adverse impacts on human rights linked to business activity. As highlighted in their structure, they contain three distinct chapters, or pillars, each defining concrete, actionable steps for governments and companies. These steps are designed to enable them to meet their respective duties and responsibilities to prevent human rights abuses in company operations and provide remedies if such abuses take place.
Here’s a breakdown of each pillar:
| Pillar | Core Responsibility | Key Actors Involved |
|---|---|---|
| Protect | State duty to protect against human rights abuses by third parties, including businesses, through policy and regulation. | Governments |
| Respect | Corporate responsibility to respect human rights, meaning businesses should avoid infringing on human rights. | Businesses (all sizes and sectors) |
| Remedy | Greater access to effective remedies, judicial and non-judicial, for victims of business-related human rights abuses. | Both Governments and Businesses |
1. The State Duty to Protect
This pillar emphasizes that states have a primary duty to protect individuals against human rights abuses committed by third parties, including businesses. This duty requires governments to:
- Establish and enforce laws: Implement robust legal frameworks that require businesses to respect human rights.
- Regulate and oversee: Monitor and regulate business activities to ensure compliance with human rights standards.
- Investigate and sanction: Investigate allegations of human rights abuses by businesses and provide appropriate sanctions where violations occur.
- Ensure policy coherence: Align policies across different government departments (e.g., trade, investment, development) to ensure they do not undermine human rights.
Example: A government might implement legislation requiring companies operating within its borders to conduct human rights due diligence, or it might strengthen labor laws to protect workers' rights in supply chains.
2. The Corporate Responsibility to Respect
This pillar outlines the responsibility of businesses to respect human rights. This means that companies, regardless of their size, sector, or operating context, should:
- Avoid causing or contributing to adverse human rights impacts: Companies should not directly infringe upon human rights through their own operations.
- Address adverse human rights impacts where they are involved: Even if a company doesn't directly cause an impact but is linked to it through its operations, products, or services, it has a responsibility to mitigate or address that impact.
- Implement human rights due diligence: This is an ongoing process for companies to identify, prevent, mitigate, and account for how they address their actual and potential human rights impacts. Key steps include:
- Assessing impacts: Identifying actual and potential human rights impacts.
- Integrating findings: Integrating these findings into internal processes and operations.
- Tracking performance: Monitoring the effectiveness of responses.
- Communicating: Reporting on how impacts are addressed.
- Establish operational-level grievance mechanisms: Provide accessible and effective channels for individuals or communities to raise concerns about human rights impacts related to the company's activities.
Example: A clothing brand conducting due diligence on its supply chain to ensure there is no forced labor or child labor involved in the production of its garments, and establishing a clear complaints mechanism for factory workers.
3. Access to Remedy
The third pillar emphasizes the need for greater access to effective remedies for victims of business-related human rights abuses. Both states and businesses have roles to play in ensuring that victims can seek redress:
- State-based judicial mechanisms: Governments should ensure that national courts provide effective avenues for individuals to seek justice for business-related human rights abuses.
- State-based non-judicial mechanisms: Governments should also facilitate access to non-judicial grievance mechanisms, such as national human rights institutions or labor mediation services.
- Company-level grievance mechanisms: Businesses should establish and participate in effective operational-level grievance mechanisms for those who may be adversely impacted by their operations.
- Effectiveness criteria: Remedies, whether judicial or non-judicial, should be legitimate, accessible, predictable, equitable, transparent, rights-compatible, and a source of continuous learning.
Example: If a community's water source is polluted due to a mining operation, effective remedy would involve legal action through national courts (state-based) or a company-led grievance process that results in compensation, environmental cleanup, or changes in company practice.
These three pillars collectively form the foundation of the Guiding Principles, serving as a globally authoritative framework for preventing and addressing business-related human rights impacts.
