11th UN Forum on business and human rights

(Version française ci-jointe)
(Versión en español adjunta)

Interpretation available in English, French and Spanish

Session organized by the UN Working Group on business and human rights

Brief description of the session:
This session will consider the recent legislation on business and human rights across WEOG States, especially in relation to mandatory human rights due diligence. This has included legislation in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Norway, as well as the proposed EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. There have also been proposals for legislation across other States, and existing legislation has been reviewed in some States, such as the Australian Modern Slavery Act. At the same time, there has been legislation about the imports of goods by businesses.

There are many governments in the WEOG region (and in other regions) that are considering whether to introduce legislation on this area or are aware of the possible effects on businesses of legislation in other States. There is also a concern by businesses that a diversity of legislative measures can create difficulties for them in compliance, and a lack of legal certainty, so coherence and consistency would be important. In addition, many civil society actors are seeking to ensure that the legislation created serves the purpose of increasing both the accountability of businesses for their adverse human rights and environmental impacts, and access to remedies by victims.

A particular focus of the session will be the processes by which these pieces of legislation came about, and how they reached the final stages. This will help all stakeholders to share the lessons learned from efforts by governments and regional entities to drive greater policy coherence on business and human rights issues through regulation, and to scale up the implementation by business enterprises of the corporate responsibility to respect human rights. It will also facilitate multi-stakeholder dialogue around the way forward in WEOG States.

Key objectives of the session:

• Clarify the key provisions of the draft EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive;
• Compare the draft EU Directive with other broad-based mandatory human rights due diligence legislation;
• Discuss the processes about how these types of legislation were crafted; and
• Offer insights for all stakeholders when considering their own legislation.

Key discussion questions:

• What were the processes which led to the draft EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive? What can be learned from those processes and what is the way forward?
• What factors should all stakeholders consider when contemplating drafting legislation on mandatory human rights due diligence and other regulation relevant to the business and human rights agenda?

Additional background documents

• https://ec.europa.eu/info/publications/proposal-directive-corporate-sustainable-due-diligence-and-annex_en
• https://media.business-humanrights.org/media/documents/EU_Business_Statement_February2022.pdf