Summary
Highlights
Companies have a significant impact on people's lives and a responsibility to avoid causing harm. Since 2011, the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP) have provided a global standard for businesses to respect human rights. Implementing these principles is challenging, especially in complex global supply chains where a single company's activities can affect a vast number of individuals.
To effectively uphold human rights while running their business, companies must prioritize. This involves identifying 'salient human rights issues,' which are the human rights at risk of the most severe negative impact. Addressing these salient issues first does not mean neglecting other human rights concerns but rather tackling the most critical ones initially.
The first factor in determining a salient issue is 'scale,' referring to the gravity of the human rights impact. This isn't about specific rights being more important, but how profoundly an individual's enjoyment of their right is diminished. For instance, Unilever identified forced labor as salient, highlighting cases like migrant workers being sold into slavery as a grave impact with great scale.
The second factor is 'scope,' which measures the number of people who are or could be negatively affected. Ericsson, for example, recognized the right to privacy as a salient issue, citing widespread concerns about government surveillance through telecommunications networks, indicating a broad scope of potential impact.
The third factor is 'irremediability,' considering whether the impact can be reversed or put right. Anglo American highlighted health and safety issues, including long-term occupational diseases and fatal work-related accidents, as top risks. These impacts, once they occur, cannot be fully remediated, making them highly salient.
These three factors—scale, scope, and irremediability—guide companies in identifying and prioritizing salient human rights issues for action and reporting. Companies like those mentioned are not only reporting but also actively working to mitigate these risks.