Human Rights
The first two principles of the UN Global Compact, which are derived from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are:
- Principle 1: Businesses should support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights; and
- Principle 2: make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses.
Human rights remains one of the most challenging areas of corporate citizenship. In part, this is because human rights have traditionally been the concern of states, and international human rights law has generally been addressed to them only. As more companies come to realize their legal, moral and/or commercial need to address human rights issues within their own operations and activities, they are confronted with a number of challenges. For example, there is the need to come to grips with the human rights framework and how a company’s own activities might relate to it. In addition, companies are often uncertain how to avoid complicity in human rights abuse and where the boundaries of their human rights responsibility lie.
Whatever one's stance in the ongoing business and human rights debate, it is clear that there is a keen demand for tools and guidance to help companies with their implementation efforts. The Global Compact Office hopes to bring more clarity to this debate by highlighting the relevance of human rights for business, demonstrating the business case for human rights, emphasizing practical solutions, and pointing to useful tools and guidance materials. Our goal is to show that advancing human rights is not just about managing risks and meeting standards and expectations, it is also about realizing new opportunities.
For more information about the human rights principles, including what companies can do to implement them, see the ten principles and principles One and Two.
Click here to download a Note on the UN Global Compact and Business and Human Rights.
Global Compact Human Rights Working Group
In June 2006, the Global Compact Board endorsed the idea of establishing a Global Compact Human Rights Working Group. Chaired by Mary Robinson, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and President of Ireland, the goal of the working group is to provide strategic input to the Global Compact’s human rights work (see the working group's terms of reference and list of members). While aiming to contribute to greater coherence, the working group also helps define new areas of work that the Global Compact has a comparative advantage in advancing, as well as new forms of learning and dialogue activities with a possible focus on the sectoral dimension of human rights. It is also hoped that the Global Compact’s extensive local network infrastructure can be involved in this work.
Interview with John Ruggie,
UN Special Representative on Business and Human Rights
Extracted from Compact Quarterly, Issue 1, 2008. Understanding human rights responsibility and accountability is very much a work in progress. There continue to be many grey areas for companies: What are they expected to do in their operations and where? Should governments be in the driving seat? What constitutes complicity in rights abuses? John Ruggie was appointed UN Special Representative on Business and Human Rights with a view to clarifying such key issues.
[ Portal page of the UN Special Representative on Business and Human Rights]
For questions or to propose additional tools and resources for this page, please contact:
Ms. Ursula Wynhoven
wynhoven@un.org
+1-212-963-5705
(Last updated 5 September2008)
