UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights

The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) is an instrument consisting of 31 principles implementing the United Nations ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ framework on this issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises. Developed by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) John Ruggie, these Guiding Principles provided the first global standard for preventing and addressing the risk of adverse impacts on human rights linked to business activity, and continue to provide the internationally accepted framework for enhancing standards and practice regarding business and human rights. On June 16, 2011, the United Nations Human Rights Council unanimously endorsed the Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights, making the framework the first corporate human rights responsibility initiative to be endorsed by the United Nations.

The UNGPs encompass three pillars outlining how states and businesses should implement the framework:

The UNGPs have received wide support from states, civil society organizations, and even the private sector, this has further solidified their status as the key global foundation for business and human rights. The UNGP are informally known as the "Ruggie Principles" or the "Ruggie Framework" due to their authorship by John Ruggie, who conceived them and led the process for their consultation and implementation.

The UNGPs came as a result of several decades of UN efforts to create global human rights standards for businesses. In the early 1970s, the United Nations Economic and Social Council requested that the Secretary General create a commission group to study the impact of transnational corporations (TNCs) on development processes and international relations. The UN created the Commission on Transnational Corporations in 1973, with the goal of formulating a corporate code of conduct for TNCs. The Commission’s work continued into the early 1990s, but the group was ultimately unable to ratify an agreeable code due to various disagreements between developed and developing countries. The group was dissolved in 1994. The debate concerning the responsibilities of business in relation to human rights became prominent in the 1990s, as oil, gas, and mining companies expanded into increasingly difficult areas, and as the practice of off-shore production in clothing and footwear drew attention to poor working conditions in global supply chains. Flowing from these concerns two major initiatives were created.

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