The UN Human Rights Council endorsed the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in 2011. Though an important milestone, the debate continues on the scope, content, and legal status of companies’ responsibility to respect human rights asserted in those Principles. To gain closer insights into this debate, between 2014 and 2015, the Universal Rights Group, together with partners including DLA Piper, Eli Lilly, Global Business Initiative on Human Rights, Mazars and Telenor, commissioned the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) to undertake a study of business opinions about human rights. They surveyed 853 senior executives from a range of industries, and did in-depth interviews with nine corporate leaders and other independent experts. The results were surprising, showing strong support for the claim that business needs to take human rights seriously.
A large majority of executives now believe that business is an important player in respecting human rights, and that what their companies do—or fail to do—affects those rights. In the EIU survey, 83% of respondents agree (74% of whom do so strongly) that human rights are a concern for business as well as governments. Similarly, 71% say that their company’s responsibility to respect these rights goes beyond simple obedience to local laws. Finally, for each of the 11 clusters of human rights in the survey, most respondents report that their firms’ operations have an impact.
A large majority of executives now believe that what their companies do—or fail to do—affects human rights. This degree of agreement represents a substantial shift from views in the past. Arvind Ganesan, director of the business and human rights division at Human Rights Watch, recalls that as recently as the late 1990s, “… there was no recognition that companies had human rights responsibilities”.
