United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights

The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) are a global standard for preventing and addressing the risk of adverse impacts on human rights linked to business activity. 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. 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.

In August 1998, the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights established a Working Group on Transnational Corporations. The Working Group similarly attempted to create standards for corporations’ human rights obligations. By 2003 they completed the final draft of the “Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights” (the Norms). While the Norms received support from some NGO’s, such as the Europe-Third World Centre (CETIM) or Amnesty International, the document encountered significant opposition from the business sector, and the Commission on Human Rights ultimately determined in 2004 that the framework had no legal standing.

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