By Witness Radio Team,
The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights have identified eight action areas aiming at scaling up its integration, implementation and corresponding supporting actions to be taken by States and businesses, as well as other stakeholders in the next 10 years.
The overall objective of the action areas is to fasten the ambition to support the overall urgent need for more coherent action detailing priority goals connected to each action area and setting out what needs to happen over the next decade.
According to the UNGPs, the action areas should be translated to practice so as to “achieve tangible results for affected individuals and communities, and thereby also contributing to a socially sustainable globalization.”
They include, UNGPs to act as a compass for meeting global challenges, state duty to protect, business responsibility to respect, access to remedy, more and better stakeholder engagement, more and better leverage to drive faster change, more and better tracking of progress and more and better international cooperation and implementation support.
The action areas listed identify priority goals of what needs to happen and supporting actions to be taken by States and businesses as well as other key stakeholders, all playing a role in realizing UNGPs implementation and their expected outcomes.
In June 2021, the UNGPs marked the tenth anniversary since its endorsement by the Human Rights Council which was termed as a major step forward in efforts to prevent and address business-related human rights abuses
The office of the OHCHR notes that as part of its mandate promote the UNGPs, the Working Group on Business and Human Rights launched a project in July 2020 to take stock of implementation of the UNGPs to date and chart a course for action in the decade ahead known as the “UNGPs 10+” or “next decade BHR” project.
The UNGPs and their three pillars (the State duty to protect human rights; the business responsibility to respect human rights; and the need for better access to remedy) provide the roadmap to recalibrate the balance between the State, people and markets, and to narrow and ultimately bridge the gaps between economic forces and respect for human rights, particularly for the most marginalized and vulnerable.
Yesterday marked the end of two-day-African Forum on Business and Human rights in Ghana were Advocates all over the world met to assess the performance of United Nations Guiding Principles (UNGPs 10+) on business and human rights on the African continent.
In the recent days, states and stake holders had overlooked the concerns of human rights abuses raised by native communities on companies operating business in their areas, this according to UNGPs implementation will address capacity gaps among State and business actors and enable them meet their respective duties and responsibilities and business responsibility on ground.
