HUMAN RIGHTS DUE DILIGENCE:

DEVELOPING A GLOBAL STANDARD AND BUILDING D OMESTIC AND REGIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY FRAMEWORKS
The International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR), the European Coalition for Corporate Justice (ECCJ) and the Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability (CNCA), are pleased to announce the launch of the Human Rights Due Diligence Project. This first-ever international coalition collaboration seeks to clarify and build consensus around the concept of human rights due diligence and to develop recommendations on how to embed this concept in domestic legislation and policies. Human rights due diligence is at the core of the international movement for corporate accountability and has been endorsed by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Thus, this standard is increasingly looked to by member states for implementing the corporate responsibility to respect human rights. Generally, human rights due diligence is understood as a concept whereby corporations should ensure that they are not directly or indirectly contributing to human rights violations in their operations and through their relationships.

Project Description
We have commissioned an Expert Team to formulate legal and policy recommendations to governments on ways to promote due diligence to prevent, remedy and mitigate adverse human rights impacts. The Expert Team will develop a survey methodology (Survey) that will be sent to various legal experts from around the world. This select group of legal experts will provide examples of ways in which different states use regulatory authority to mandate or encourage businesses to engage in due diligence activity in the human rights area, other areas that are akin to human rights (e.g. labor rights), or otherwise provide useful analogs due to well-established corporate compliance practices (e.g. anti-corruption). Throughout this research process, private consultations will be held in various jurisdictions for our experts to meet with local experts, legal practitioners and civil society leaders. These consultations enable us to gain valuable inputs into our project, to promote the findings and to aide in bringing together diverse legal practitioners with local NGOs. The Project expects that the research will demonstrate that, in appropriate circumstances, states may use regulatory authority to encourage and even mandate due diligence activities in the human rights field. In doing so, they may choose to specify the precise due diligence steps that enterprises should take, along the lines currently being followed in a number of states in such diverse fields as human 1

rights, environmental protection, anti-corruption, money laundering, labor rights and civil rights. The Projects final recommendations to individual states for new governmental due diligence initiatives will encourage the adoption of best practices in current use. The recommendations will also take into account differences among legal systems and cultures, varying levels of economic development, and other distinguishing factors identified in the survey responses.

Project Timeline
April 2012-August 2012: Survey methodology released, Consultation period o EU Consultation Copenhagen April 23rd- 24th, 2012 o US/Canada/Mexico Consultation Washington DC June 25th, 2012 o Asia/Australia Consultation Hong Kong August 10th-11th, 2012 o Latin America Consultation TBD - TBD Initial findings presented at ICAR Second Annual Meeting Washington DC September 6th-7th, 2012 September 2012-Novemeber 2012: Drafting phase December 2012 - Report Release

Expert Biographies
Professor Anita Ramasastry Anita Ramasastry is the D. Wayne and Anne Gittinger Professor of Law at the University of Washington School of Law. She has worked in the field of business and human rights for more than a decade. Her research focuses on the role of economic actors in conflict affected areas and weak governance zones. From 2009-2011, she was a senior advisor in the International Trade Administration of the US Department of Commerce. In 2008, she was a Fulbright Scholar at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland Galway, where her research focused on business and human rights in armed conflict. Previously she has served as an advisor to the International Commission of Jurists Expert Panel on Corporate Complicity; she was the project lead for the Commerce, Crime and Conflict Project, sponsored by Fafo Institute of Applied International Studies in Norway. The Commerce Crime and Conflict Study assessed the status of civil and criminal liability for businesses in 16 countries with respect to serious human rights violations occurring in host country jurisdictions. Ramasastry teaches international business transactions, commercial law, law and development and comparative and international law. Mark B. Taylor Mark B. Taylor is a Senior Researcher at the Fafo Institute for Applied International Studies in Oslo. Marks areas of work include regulatory and policy responses to violence and conflict. Mark has extensive experience of policy processes, including as an expert facilitator of consultations led by the UN SRSG on Business and Human Rights on the issue of state responses to business in conflict (2009-2010), 2

as well as a participant in multi-stakeholder consultations at the OECD on responsible supply chain management in conflict-affect and high risk zones (2010). A former Managing Director at the Fafo Institute, Mark represents Fafo as a founding member of the Center for American Progress Just Jobs Network and is a Senior Advisor to Global Witness, London, in their campaign Ending Impunity. Mark began his work life as a journalist and has worked as a human rights analyst for non-governmental organizations, business, governments and the United Nations. Mark is Editor of the The Laws of Rule blawg www.lawsofrule.net. He holds a B.A. (honours) in Religious Studies from McGill University, in Montreal and an LL.M (cum laude) in Public International Law from Leiden University, The Netherlands (1996), where he is presently completing a mid-career PhD in International Criminal Law. A full list of publications can be found here. http://www.fafo.no/pers/bio/mta.htm Professor Olivier de Schutter Olivier De Schutter has been the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food since May 2008. He currently is teaching human rights and EU law at Columbia University, as well as at the Catholic University of Louvain, and at the College of Europe (Natolin). Between 2002 and 2006, he chaired the EU Network of Independent Experts on Fundamental Rights, a high-level group of experts which advised the European Union institutions on fundamental rights issues. Since 2004, and until his appointment as the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, he was the General Secretary of the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) on the issue of globalization and human rights. Prof. De Schutters most recent book is International Human Rights Law (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010). He received his Ph.D from the University of Louvain and LL.M from Harvard Law School. Robert C. Thompson Robert C. Thompson is a lawyer who lives in New York City. Educated at Harvard College and Harvard Law School (Class of 1967), he worked for the law firm of Choate, Hall & Stewart and Boston for five years and then entered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the following eleven years, reaching the rank of Associate General Counsel. In 1984, he joined the firm of Graham & James in San Francisco as a partner, and in 1992 became a partner in the San Francisco office of LeBouef, Lamb, Greene & MacRae (now Dewey & LeBoeuf). He was the chairman of the international environmental group of each of those firms. Following his retirement in 2000, he has devoted his time to international human rights matters.

Project Leadership
Amol Mehra, amol@accountabilityroundtable.org Amol Mehra is a lawyer who works as Coordinator of the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR), a coalition of 15 leading human rights and environmental organizations working at the nexus of business and human rights. He has developed an extensive background on business and human rights issues, including at the United Nations where he has worked to build accountability over private security companies and offered submissions to the mandate of the Special Representative on 3

Transnational Corporations. In addition to his work at ICAR, Amol is a Board Member of Human Rights Advocates, a Coordinating Member and Thematic Specialist for Amnesty International USA, and writes for Forbes.com CSR site. Amol also serves as an Advisory Board Member of Lawyers for Better Business (L4BB) and an Advisory Member for SumOfUs. Filip Gregor, filip.gregor@eps.cz Filip Gregor serves as a Board Member of the European Coalition for Corporate Justice (ECCJ). Filip works as a lawyer with the Environmental Law Service, a Czech-based public interest law NGO. He has been involved in litigation on behalf of communities whose rights have been abused in the course of promotion of foreign direct investments, for example in the ArcelorMittal case, Hyundai Motor Manufacturing case or Nokian Tyres case. As a board member of the ECCJ, he is responsible for the development of ECCJ legal proposals. He is an author of several publications on legal reforms of EU corporate accountability framework, notably Fair Law: Legal Proposals to Improve Corporate Accountability for Environmental and Human Rights Abuses, and Principles & Pathways: Legal opportunities to improve Europes corporate accountability framework. Catherine Coumans, catherine@miningwatch.ca Catherine Coumans, Ph.D. is Research Coordinator and Asia-Pacific Program Coordinator at MiningWatch Canada and a member of the Steering Committee of the Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability. Catherine works with non-governmental organizations and mining affected communities in India, Burma, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Kanaky-New Caledonia, Mongolia, Canada and the United States. Her work has focused on indigenous peoples affected by Canadian mining companies in the Asia-Pacific region. Catherine has provided expert testimony on mining in two congressional inquiries in the Philippines (1999, 2001), as well as before the Constitutional Court in Indonesian (2005), the parliamentary SubCommittee on Human Rights and Democratic Development in Canada (2005) and the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development in Canada (2009). She participated on the Government of Canada's Advisory Group for the National Roundtables on CSR and the Extractive Sector in Developing Countries (2006-2007). In 2008 Catherine participated in an Amici Brief for the Supreme Court of the United States on mine waste disposal in natural water bodies. She currently sits on the steering committee of the Government of Canada's Center for Excellence in Corporate Social responsibility and the Canadian Extractive Industries. Her recent publications include: Mining, human rights and the socially responsible investment industry: considering community opposition to shareholder resolutions and implications of collaboration (2012) in Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment; Occupying Spaces Created by Conflict: Anthropologists, Development NGOs, Responsible Investment and Mining, in Current Anthropology (April 2011); Alternative Accountability Mechanisms and Mining: the problems of effective impunity, human rights and agency, in Canadian Journal of Development Studies (2010); a chapter on solidarity relationships between NGOs and Indigenous Peoples in Earth Matters: Indigenous Peoples, the extractive industries and corporate social responsibility (2008). Catherine holds an M.Sc. (London School of Economics) and a Ph.D. (McMaster University) in Cultural Anthropology and carried out Postdoctoral research at Cornell University. She has taught at Cornell and McMaster. 4

Organizational Information
The International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR) is coalition of leading human rights groups including Amnesty International, EarthRights International, Global Witness, Human Rights First, and Human Rights Watch. Based in Washington, D.C, the organization harnesses the power of the human rights community to identify and promote robust frameworks for corporate accountability; strengthen current measures; and defend existing laws, policies and legal precedents. The European Coalition of Corporate Justice (ECCJ) promotes corporate accountability (CA) by bringing together national platforms of civil society organizations (CSOs) including NGOs, trade unions, consumer advocacy groups and academic institutions from all over Europe. ECCJ represents over 250 CSOs present in fifteen European countries such as FIDH and national chapters of Oxfam, Greenpeace, Amnesty International and Friends of the Earth. The Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability (CNCA) The CNCA unites environmental and human rights NGOs, faith groups, labour unions, and research and solidarity groups across Canada, including the Halifax Initiative. CNCA members seek the adoption of federal legislation that establishes mandatory corporate accountability standards for Canadian extractive companies that operate abroad. The provision of government support to Canadian corporations should be conditional on compliance with these standards. The network aims to enhance the effectiveness of its members activities through information sharing, policy analysis and research, and to coordinate joint advocacy for legal and policy reform. The CNCA also seeks to promote public awareness of these issues.