2 - Human Rights Guidelines for Organisations - Why

2

Human Rights Guidelines for Organisations
What does this mean for your organisation?

Why are these guidelines important?

cleaning the area

Non-binding guidelines seek to promote and support compliance with human rights law. They are increasingly used to facilitate consensus among stakeholders on highly sensitive topics, such as the creation of legal personality for non-state organisations at the international level. These guidelines are a framework that complements human rights law, facilitates compliance and enforcement, and increases awareness about its relevance.

Non-binding guidelines are also important because they have guided state regulation of organisations’ activities. Two conceptual frameworks explain these regulatory mechanisms. Firstly, “responsive regulation” is a regulatory approach that encourages businesses (and other organisations) adapt their processes and activities to comply with human rights or environmental law (amongst others), without being obliged to do so by mandatory regulations.

Secondly, “networked governance” aims to clarify the range of hard and soft law to solve complex problems, such as the interaction between diverse actors and their activities and respect for human rights. Governance does not involve only binding law made by the state, because the issues at stake are not purely legal and involve the action of several actors and frameworks.

Tool 2 presents diverse initiatives that aim to fill the gap generated left by the lack of accountability at the international level for organisations’ adverse human rights impacts, as well as the difficulty of using transnational mechanisms at the national level to hold organisations accountable for such impacts.

What does this mean for your organsation?

Large corporations

Although states are the only parties responsible for complying with human rights law at the international level, organisations and individuals must comply with the human rights law in force in the territory where they carry out their activities.

Organisations, independently of their size and legal nature, must know and comply with their human rights obligations. When they violate human rights law, they must redress or compensate the damage caused.

Human rights should always be respected (although in exceptional circumstances the state can limit them or progressively fulfil rights that have budgetary implications). This means that an adverse human rights impact caused in a specific area or by a specific activity cannot be compensated by a benefit or a redress provided in another.

Small and medium-sized corporations

These guidelines are a framework that complements human rights law, facilitates compliance and enforcement, and increases awareness about its relevance.

Such guidelines aim to make all types of organisations aware of the “adverse human rights impacts” that their activities could cause, such as obstructing, limiting or eliminating the ability of people to enjoy their human rights.

non-profit corporations

These guidelines are a framework that complements human rights law, facilitates compliance and enforcement, and increases awareness about its relevance.

state-owned corporations

These guidelines are a framework that complements human rights law, facilitates compliance and enforcement, and increases awareness about its relevance.

public entities

These guidelines are a framework that complements human rights law, facilitates compliance and enforcement, and increases awareness about its relevance.