Human Rights Impact Assessment is a process for systematically identifying, predicting and responding to the potential human rights impacts of a business operation, capital project, government policy, or trade agreement. It is designed to complement a company or government's other impact assessment and due diligence processes and to be framed by appropriate international human rights principles and conventions. It is also rooted in the realities of the particular project by incorporating the context within which it will operate from the outset, and by engaging directly with those peoples whose rights may be at risk.
Conducting a Human Rights Impact Assessment is an integrated part of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), which is the "authoritative global standard on the respective roles of businesses and governments in helping [to] ensure that companies respect human rights in their own operations and through their business relationships."
Corporate Human Rights Impact Assessment
Background In 2005, the Secretary-General of the United Nations appointed John Ruggie to the post of Special Representative on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations. His mandate was, “to identify and clarify standards of corporate responsibility and accountability for transnational corporations and other business enterprises with regard to human rights”. This broad task included a request "to develop materials and methodologies for undertaking human rights impact assessments of the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises". The mandate was set to expire in June 2008, but Ruggie was granted a three-year extension.
That extension culminated in a set of Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (the UNGPs) that sets out expectations for companies and governments for what it means to respect human rights in a business setting. Part of the business responsibility is to conduct a "human rights due diligence" as described in operational principle 17: "In order to identify, prevent and mitigate adverse human rights impacts, and to account for their performance, business enterprises should carry out human rights due diligence. The process should include assessing actual and potential human rights impacts, integrating and acting upon the findings, and tracking as well as communicating their performance."
Little guidance existed to define the process of assessing human rights impacts when Ruggie was called on to establish methodologies, and he stated publicly in 2006 that "the dimensions of this task unfortunately turn out to be beyond the resource and time constraints of the mandate". However, Ruggie committed to "closely monitor two ongoing efforts" to establish HRIA methodologies, specifically, the efforts of the Danish Institute for Human Rights and the International Finance Corporation, who were each working on methodologies for human rights assessment. In June 2011, the United Nations Human Rights Council unanimously endorsed the Guiding Principles. Neither the IFC nor the Danish Institute had produced a field-tested methodology that could serve as a guide for practitioners.
In 2011, the OECD adopted its updated Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (MNE), which now included a human rights chapter that mirrors the UNGPs. The European Commission has also strongly committed itself to implement the UNGPs and "promote the uptake of the implementation of the Guiding Principles among EU countries and enterprises" and features them prominently in the EU Commission's Strategy on CSR. The Equator Principles and FAO have also incorporated assessment of human rights impacts into their project and loan requirements. This has increased the demand for clear guidance on how HRIA is conducted.
In March 2011, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) augmented its reporting standards to include a Human Rights Impact Assessment requirement. GRI now has 11 human rights standards (up from two), the 10th of which calls on companies to state what percentage of operations have been subject to human rights impact assessment.
Methodologies A publicly available, peer-reviewed methodology for HRIA is published in the Environmental Impact Assessment Review. This publication was based on the work of a Denver, Colorado-based think tank, Nomogaia, which developed a toolkit for HRIA accompanied by a comprehensive database of case studies available to the public. This toolkit incorporates an extensive "Rightsholder Engagement" process, also present in the Salcito et al. methodology, which aims to incorporate the views and experiences of the most vulnerable members of impacted communities.
The Danish Institute for Human Rights has created two tools — a "Quick Check" that could be conducted from the confines of a corporate office, and a Human Rights Compliance Assessment (HRCA) tool. Only the Quick Check is publicly available,Danish Institute for Human Rights: Human Rights and Business Project and companies sign agreements vowing not to publish or share any element of the HRCA reports they create. The HRCA is described by the Danish Institute as "a comprehensive tool designed to detect human rights risks in company operations. It covers all internationally recognized human rights and their impact on all stakeholders, including employees, local communities, customers, and host governments. The tool incorporates a database of approximately 200 questions and 1,000 indicators, each measuring the implementation of human rights in company policies and procedures. The database incorporates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and more than 80 human rights treaties and ILO conventions"."Human Rights and Business Project ", Danish Institute for Human Rights. Although no HRCAs have been published, the Danish Institute states that "hundreds of companies" have used it."Human Rights and Business Project FAQs", Danish Institute for Human Rights.
Rights & Democracy (International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development) was a Canadian institution created through an Act of Parliament in 1988 that was dissolved in 2012. Rights & Democracy initiated a multi-year research initiative in 2004 with the objective of creating a community-based human rights impact assessment (HRIA) methodology and guiding tool. After initial methodologies were developed and tested, a third version of the methodology was released in 2011 called Getting it Right, which has been relaunched through an Oxfam partnership. The site guided users through a six step process, including an interactive tool to select the specific rights of concern and generate tailored interview protocols for communities, companies, and government actors that can be adapted to specific field contexts during the investigation phase.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC), in collaboration with the London-based International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) produced a Guide to Human Rights Impact Assessment and Management Road-Testing Draft in August 2007, which it updated in June 2012 Eni announced in January 2010 that it had piloted the IFC/IBLF tool, and the IBLF reports that other companies have also been part of a road-testing process. and again in June 2012. No road-testing of this tool has ever been announced or made public.
Washington, D.C.-based law firm Foley Hoag conducts Human Rights Impact Assessments, which are confidential, with the exception of its HRIA on BP's Tangguh project in Papua, Indonesia. The Executive Summary to that assessment was available online for several years but is no longer available.
On Common Ground, a Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada-based consulting group, was hired to conduct a Human Rights Impact Assessment for the Marlin mine in Guatemala, owned by Goldcorp. The report was ultimately concluded to be a Human Rights Assessment, because assessors could not contrast baseline with change to establish impacts. The assessors also noted that the report could not be considered an impact assessment because the most significantly impacted rightsholder group, the Sipacapa people, were not interviewed or engaged during the assessment process.On Common Ground Consultants, "Human Rights Assessment of Goldcorp’s Marlin Mine", Commissioned on behalf of Goldcorp by the Steering Committee for the Human Rights Impact Assessment of the Marlin Mine, May 2010, The methodology used by On Common Ground, as the document states, incorporated the Danish Institute's Compliance Assessment. It involved interviews (one-on-one and in focus groups) with nearly 200 people. Assessors conducted thoughtful analysis of the tools, standards, and guides used and were reflective of the report's strengths and weaknesses. Commissioned years after production (and community revolt) had begun at the mine, local conditions and project design had all changed drastically by the time assessors arrived. Further complicating the assessment, the mine's EIA was faulty and peppered with gaps. The HRA identified those gaps and went to the expense of commissioning a follow-up environmental study to verify, create, and update information that was not extant or usable in the original environmental impact assessment.Nomogaia Commentary on Marlin HRA, July 2010
In December 2015, GLOBAL CSR publicized a web-based Human Rights Impact Assessment Tool, meant to allow for storing, managing, and reporting actions in relation to the assessment. It has not yet been implemented or publicly validated. They introduced a new tool in 2021 called SEE impacts which has been implemented by some EU based firms as a CSDDD compliant option.
Case studies In addition to the Marlin HRA and the BP Executive Summary of HRIA, fourteen corporate HRIA case studies are publicly available. Seven were produced by Canadian non-profit, Rights & Democracy, two by Oxfam America, four were produced by Nomogaia, and one was made available by consulting firm TwentyFifty.
Rights & Democracy published a collection of case studies in 2007, assessing foreign investment projects in the Philippines (mining), Tibet (surveillance technology), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (mining), Argentina (water privatization), and Peru (mining). In all examples, except Tibet, companies participated in the assessment by providing information, interviews, and feedback on various draft texts. The studies were used differently by the communities that produced them. In Peru, the impact assessment resulted in an ongoing dialogue with company representatives. In the case of Argentina, the assessment formed the basis of an amicus curiae submitted by civil society to an arbitration process between European companies and the government of Argentina. In the Philippine case, the assessment was submitted to the United Nations Committee on Racism as a shadow report. Each of the participating communities reported that the experience had offered them a constructive means to advocate for their human rights.The Rights and Democracy site has been removed, and the organization has ceased to exist Oxfam America completed an impact assessment focused on migrant labor in the tobacco-producing areas of the southern United States using the Rights and Democracy tool. The final report inspired the CEO of Reynolds Tobacco to issue a call for industry-wide reforms. In another example, the Carter Center, is currently using the R&D methodology to carry an HRIA in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.