UN Report on Business and Human Rights, Updated

At this time last year, John Ruggie, the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on business and human rights released a report, “Protect, Respect and Remedy: a Framework for Business and Human Rights” [PDF] recommending, as we reported then, implementation of a framework to give effect to

the State duty to protect against human rights abuses by third parties, including business; the corporate responsibility to respect human rights; and the need for more effective access to remedies.

Ruggie has now released a report to the UN Human Rights Council on his work since that time, entitled “Business and human rights: Towards operationalizing the ‘protect, respect and remedy’ framework.” [PDF]

The table of contents of the report is as follows:

I. INTRODUCTION .
II. THE ECONOMIC CRISIS
III. THE STATE DUTY TO PROTECT .
A. Corporate law .
B. Investment and trade agreements .
C. International cooperation .
D. Summing up .
IV. THE CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY TO RESPECT .
A. Responsibility to respect
B. Due diligence .
C. Summing up .
V. ACCESS TO REMEDY
A. State obligations .
B. Interplay between judicial and non-judicial mechanisms
C. Judicial mechanisms .
D. Non-judicial mechanisms
E. Summing up
VI. CONCLUSION