The general recommendations are:
- …Companies whose business model includes the provision of essential goods and services initially take on a part of a public, socially significant, function. They should provide enhanced human rights due diligence requires companies, in particular to ask themselves:
Are you a supplier of essential goods and services? Do you occupy a key role in providing local people with access to essential services and good?
Did you continue to supply essential goods and services after the start of war / occupation of the territory?…
Was the decision made taking into account the local context and its dynamics?
Regardless of whether the company decides to continue operating or stop, it is important that the process to get to a decision should be consultative and build on local knowledge/information.
- Understanding of the heightened human rights due diligence as identifying potential and actual impacts on people (human rights) as well as on the context (conflict) should be supplemented with one more component, i.e. preventing or minimization of the conflict’s impact on people (human rights). The conflict could change significantly the scope of corporate responsibility to respect human rights. It’s not about a company’s impact on human rights, but it’s about its role in responding to human rights challenges that conflict creates. In some cases, we should talk about corporate responsibility to respect, fulfil, and promote human rights in situations of conflict. For example, should a company make every effort to help employees and their families with evacuation? Or should a company assess the essentiality of its products and services for local people in situations of conflict (for example, providers of internet and communication services could play vital role because their services provide people with a possibility to be informed about the situation, humanitarian aid etc)?
- Companies should make all possible efforts to engage stakeholders. In particular, it’s important for understanding of the context of conflict and its dynamic. And in conflict situations, local companies in many cases demonstrate much more responsible business conduct than multinational companies just because local companies are in direct communication with stakeholders who are impacted by conflict…
- Both business and state should build capacity to apply vulnerability lenses; for example, buildings, transport remained inaccessible to people with limited mobility in peacetime, despite the existence of legal requirements to ensure such accessibility. In many cases, this made it impossible to evacuate people with disabilities when war started. In addition, the lack of gender and work-life balance sensitivity made business decisions during wartime more burdensome for women and people with family responsibilities…
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