Dr. Ekaterina Deikalo, Belarusian Helsinki Committee, Danish Institute for Human Rights,  2020

This guide helps you quickly understand the topic of “business and human rights” and provides a basic toolkit for introducing proper approaches to business processes and government regulation.

Business and human rights is the relationship and balancing act between the important system – business – and the “little person”: employee, client, local communities, which arise directly from the production cycle or other process of making a profit. Also included are the company’s relationships with business partners that affect the little man.

What will you find inside

SECTION 1

describes the purpose and target audience, the context for the development of the Guidelines

SECTION 2

explains the inconsistency of the prevailing stereotypes of politicized perception of human rights and reveals the content of the principles of human rights

SECTIONS 3-4

highlight the factors and processes influencing the appearance of this topic on the agenda of the world community, demonstrate the importance of the topic for business, its relationship with the Sustainable Development Goals and the degree of recognition by key stakeholders (international organizations, states and business itself)

SECTION 5

outlines the substantive framework and the framework of legal regulation, that is, the scope of the topic

SECTION 6

reveals the role of the state and its positive obligations in the field of business and human rights, as well as the measures that should be taken by it to minimize the negative impact of business on human rights

SECTION 7

discloses the status and content of the obligation of business to respect human rights and highlights the forms of business involvement in violation of human rights. This section contains some statistics on the most frequently violated rights by business. As well as data on violating companies, broken down by business areas

SECTIONS 8-9

describe the main problem areas in the context of the negative impact of entrepreneurial activity on human rights in the Republic of Belarus, which require a response from both business and the state. The section contains recommendations of international control bodies given to the Republic of Belarus on these aspects, an overview of cases from practice to illustrate the problem.

SECTION 10

contains a basic toolkit for the implementation of human rights in the company management system. This section describes step by step the elements and mechanism for implementing a company’s human rights due diligence (due diligence to prevent human rights violations)

SECTION 11

reveals the role of the state, business and civil society in providing effective remedies against violations of human rights by business, points out the main problems for Belarus in this context, provides an overview of existing international mechanisms for access to such means and some statistics on their functioning