Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD) is essentially a management tool that helps companies to minimize their negative human rights impacts.
HRDD is the process of identifying, assessing, preventing, mitigating and remedying negative human rights impacts, and accounting for how the company has done this. Building a strong human rights culture within a company and regularly engaging with potentially impacted people is key to this process.
Negative human rights impacts are linked to internationally recognised human rights, as defined in the International Bill of Rights and the ILO’s Fundamental Conventions. These include protections against forced and child labour, the right to health, the right to collective bargaining and the right to not be discriminated against. In addition, businesses may not negatively impact the land or cultural rights of indigenous people, their employees’ freedom of thought and the right to a healthy environment.
As companies can impact so many different human rights, it is vital to conduct HRDD to identify and reduce existing and potential negative impacts.