Thursday, 08 May 2014
This dialogue was organised by the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable, Danish Institute for Human Rights and the Global Business Initiative on Human Rights, to facilitate understanding of the perspectives of business practitioners regarding the scope, content, and development of National Action Plans on business and human rights (NAPs). This report outlines the key themes from the meeting (download the full report here). The agenda and participants list can be found in the appendix. The Dialogue was carried out under the Chatham House Rule. The key themes are addressed:
- Support for state implementation of the UNGPs. Support for NAPS alongside ongoing efforts to strengthen good governance and rule of law.
- Multi-stakeholder processes are important for developing and implementing NAPs.
- Support for focusing resources on the most urgent, systemic and severe human rights risks.
- NAPS should not focus solely on business conduct and activities. They should address the full range of a State’s economic policies, strategies and activities.
- When it comes to business conduct, NAPS should include a focus on legislation and regulation, but not exclusively so.
- NAPs – and state implementation more broadly – could draw on existing standards and tools from industry and multi-stakeholder initiatives.
- Consistent with the “Protect, Respect, Remedy” Framework, access to remedy should be addressed within NAPs, and all types of remedy should be explored.
- Support for knowledge sharing and capacity-building between States.