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Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom
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We work with legal advisers and try very much to bring human rights to a business
audience. One of the main publications on which we worked. A Guide for Integrating
Human Rights into Business Management - also available in Chinese - quite simply takes
the elements of a standard management system and explains how human rights slots into
it. It explains things you need to be looking out for, but also the kinds of opportunities to
be found in this area.
Throughout 2006-2009, the second stage of the project, we have been delving deeper
into more thematic areas, toward the difficult questions, looking at the issue of emerging
economies, at the question of accountability and good governance in sensitive countries.
What we have been seeing particularly over the last year is increased interest from
governments on this issue, Ironically, some companies, not all by any means, are more
advanced on this subject than governments are.
Prof. John G. Ruggie, was appointed by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in 2005 as the
UN Special Representative on Business and Human Rights. This appointment arose out of
the debate surrounding the UN Norms. Professor Ruggie was appointed to do some
mapping in this area and to understand it better.
Ruggie's mandate included identifying corporate responsibility standards, elaborating the
role of the states, building human rights impact assessments, as well as compiling a
compendium of best practices.
His latest report proposes a framework for action, based on three elements - protect,
respect and remedy - which it is hoped will be endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council
in June 2008.
Protection is about what states should be doing in relation to companies. Because states
have signed the international treaties, they have an obligation to ensure that other actors,
including companies, are not violating human rights.
Respect, which is the most interesting for us, is about the corporate responsibility to
respect human rights, that is not to violate them.
Remedy, also extremely important, is about access to justice when human rights violations
do occur.
I should mention for those of you who are journalists an excellent web site called The
Business and Human Rights Resources Center (www.business-humanrights.org), where
you will find stories about violations relating to companies and the responses from those
companies, in a very balanced debate.
There is a great deal happening in sector-specific areas - pharmaceutical companies
looking at the right to health; information technology companies and freedom of
information; apparel companies and their supply chains. It is important to note, however,