BUSINESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS / Šturma, Mozetic (eds)

human rights abuses, business enterprises should carry out human rights due diligence. The process should include assessing actual and potential human rights impacts, integrating and acting upon the findings, and communicating how impacts are addressed. 16 The due diligence process shall go beyond identifying and managing material risks to the company itself and should include risks the business activities may pose to the rights of affected individuals. 17 The third pillar of the Guiding Principles specifies the need to ensure better access to legal remedies which address the joint responsibility of States and business enterprises for human rights violations. States are required to take steps to investigate, punish, and redress business related abuses of human rights. They must take steps to ensure, through judicial, administrative, legislative, or other appropriate means, that those affected have access to an effective remedy. 18 Besides judicial remedies, also state-based non-judicial and non-state-based mechanisms may be used. From a European perspective, we may say that since the very beginning of the drafting process the European Union has been very supportive and engaged in the development of the Guiding Principles. Two global consultations were held at the UN European Headquarters in Geneva and an EU-wide consultation was convened during the Swedish EU presidency in Stockholm. 19 There were several factors that influenced the EU’s active involvement, including a growing pressure from the European Parliament and civil society and the prospect of promoting its own standards on Corporate Social Responsibility. 20 In 2011, the European Commission issued a new EU Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy for the years 2011 - 2014 which included a specific action item on “Implementing the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights”. 21 Seven years after the adoption of the UN Guiding Principles there are numerous examples of how they have been integrated into governments’ national action plans, policies and regulations, further into policy documents of international and regional organisations, 22 and last but not least, into the practice of many business entities around the world. 16 Guiding Principle no 17 – Human Rights Due Diligence; UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework, annex to A/ HRC/17/31, endorsed by the Human Rights Council resolution 17/4 of 16 June 2011. 17 RUGGIE, John Gerard: Just Business, Multinational Corporations and Human Rights , W. W. Norton and Company LTD. London, 2013, p. 99. 18 Guiding Principle no 25 – Access to Remedy; UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework, annex to A/HRC/17/31, endorsed by the Human Rights Council resolution 17/4 of 16 June 2011. 19 RUGGIE, op. cit., p. 142. 20 PEARSON, Gosia: The Emergence of Business and Human Rights in the EU’s External Relations, Oxford Human Rights Hub, 3 March 2015; available at: http://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/the-emergence-of-business- and-human-rights-in-the-eus-external-relations/. 21 RUGGIE, op. cit., p. 165. 22 Ibid, p. 121.

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