Advanced search
image
Global issues
   

Business & human rights

Local worker picking tea leaves on a tea plantation in Kumily, South India (EyesWideOpen/Getty Images)The Foreign Secretary has made it clear that the UK will take forward our prosperity drive while maintaining our commitment to human rights as a core value at the heart of foreign policy.

The UK is committed to promoting responsible corporate behaviour by UK companies operating, or considering operating, overseas. This includes respect for the human rights of people involved in or affected by their operations.

An important part of the work of our missions overseas is to promote human rights with their host government. And when it comes to commercial work we aim to help UK companies understand and respect the local human rights issues and factor these into their policies so as to avoid generating any human rights harm through their activity.

UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights

In June 2011 the Human Rights Council endorsed the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. This marked the culmination of several years’ work by the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative on Business and Human Rights, Professor John Ruggie, with the UK playing a key role in support. The Principles are also known as the ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy Framework’, for the three pillars they comprise, namely the State duty to protect against human rights abuses by third parties, including business; the corporate responsibility to respect human rights of others; and the need for access by victims to effective remedies, judicial and non-judicial.

The Government is fully committed to implementing the Guiding Principles as part of its strategy on business and human rights and expects UK businesses to operate at all times in a way respectful of human rights whether in Britain or overseas. At the same time we are also working hard to ensure a widespread international take-up and implementation of the Guiding Principles.

Business & Human Rights toolkit

Our Business and Human Rights Toolkit [PDF 330Kb, opens in a new window] is designed to help our overseas missions promote good conduct by UK companies operating overseas.

The Toolkit:

  • Explains our policy on business and human rights
  • Provides guidance on relevant initiatives and resources, including the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises - voluntary principles and standards that we encourage companies to follow wherever they are trading and operating.

We are also committed to promoting the OECD Guidelines’ the complaints procedure through the UK National Contact Point. We are also committed to upholding our commitments to the OECD Bribery Convention, and the UN Convention Against Corruption as well as various European Conventions.

Overseas Business Risk (OBR) service

In conjunction with UK Trade and Investment we provide a service which alerts companies to the possible risks of operating in certain overseas markets and which included human rights issues where these are a potential factor of concern.