The Human Rights and Business Project offers an essential service to the field of human rights. Where other organizations tell corporations, “Here’s why you should protect human rights”, the Project says “Here’s how”.

Julian Kassum, International Chamber of Commerce

The Human Rights and Business Project is a department of The Danish Institute for Human Rights devoted to business and its impact on human rights. We are a research team, a consultancy focused on implementation and impact and the hub of a network of business and human rights organisations. Our research, tools, methodologies and projects are focused on improving corporate performance on human rights.

Who do we work with?
Our clients and partners are international companies that have made an internal and external commitment to respect human rights in their operations. We are directly engaged with 17 Fortune 500 companies, and our approaches and tools have been applied in more than 200 additional companies, mostly in the extractive, apparel, agriculture, pharmaceutical and financial sectors.

In addition to our direct work with companies, we also engage in partnerships with a wide range of human rights organisations and institutions. This keeps us connected to human rights developments around the world, and allows us to gather and utilize human rights information from the communities that are directly affected by business activity.

Our human rights partners include the UN Global Compact, developing country human rights organisations, Western-based NGOs working with business and more than 100 National Human Rights Institutions—the largest human rights network in the world.

Private sector engagement
We engage with business on two levels: As clients and as partners.

We assist our client companies to design policies and practices that nurture human rights throughout their operations, but in a confidential setting that allows us to have an open dialogue within the company.

Our partner companies, on the other hand, are public collaborators, applying our tools and piloting our projects to develop cutting-edge solutions to human rights challenges. These partnerships allow us to report practical examples of how human rights challenges can be faced on the ground, in a way that meets the commercial needs and interests of business. In other words, they are our partners in moving the entire field of human rights and business forward. Our partners include Shell International and Novartis, both of which have cooperated with the Project at both the policy and country operating unit levels.

Shell has maintained a strong relationship with the Danish Institute for Human Rights since 2000. The Human Rights and Business Project has continued to provide us with substantial insight and policy input to assist us in addressing our human rights challenges. We strongly value the relationship that we have developed over the years and look forward to continuing it in the future.

Albert Wong, head of policy and external relations, Shell International

What do we do?
Our tools and methodologies include:

• The Human Rights Compliance Assessment (HRCA): The most comprehensive available tool for companies to check their performance on human rights. Company managers or company compliance officers can examine company operations and policies, and benchmark company performance against more than 80 international human rights conventions covering all internationally recognised human rights.
  
  The HRCA was developed over a six-year period in cooperation with 70 companies, 50 NGOs, 35 human rights experts and several major employer organisations and unions. It is unrivalled in terms of breadth, depth and level of expertise, and over 500 businesses and other organizations in 59 countries around the world are currently registered users of one or more modules of the HRCA. In addition, versions of the HRCA have been tailored to particular sectors, companies and countries.
  For more information, see Human Rights Compliance Assessment
  
  
• The Country Risk Assessment describes human rights challenges in law and practice in the world’s most high-risk, investment-relevant emerging economies. The reports cover all rights and their potential proximity to companies, and also include Sector Analyses and Supplier Risk sections. Country Risk Assessments can be tailored to company sector or region.
  For more information, see Country Risk Assessments
  
  
• Policy analysis examines high-level company commitments and internal practices and measures them against the HRCA or other legal standards. This process also incorporates sector best-practices and ‘residual risks’ that may not be covered by company policy.
  For more information, see Consultancy Services
  
  
• Capacity building projects gather business leaders and NGOs for training and experience-sharing in the local business environment in developing countries. This increases companies’ capacity to develop human rights practices, and also increases local NGOs’ capacity to respond to the concerns of business. This program has been piloted in China, South Africa and the Balkans, and is being developed for additional countries and regions.
  For more information, see Capacity Building
  
  
• The Country Risk Index, a quantitative tool that ranks human rights legislation and practices according to international standards. The CRI covers more than 100 countries, and the quantitative ratings provide an objective standard for assessing key human rights concerns in different business environments, allowing companies to develop their human rights management strategies.

How do we work?
All of our tools and methodologies have three key features:

1. Application: We develop our solutions in partnership with companies and test them in actual operations, ensuring that they stay closely aligned with the immediate, real-world needs of international business.

2. DIY: Our tools encourage companies to ’do it yourself’—building the internal capacity to handle human rights issues as they appear in day-to-day operations.

3. Immediacy: Our tools and methodologies are designed to be applied as soon as they are delivered. Companies don’t need to become experts in the human rights field or access detailed background information to begin an assessment of their operations.

The question that I get most often from managers with whom I talk about the human rights and business theme is “What should I do differently tomorrow morning?” To answer this question and to operationalise this important debate, the HRCA is enormously helpful. The Project combines the expertise of human rights specialists with concrete business experience and thus closes the gap between aspirations and deliverables.

Klaus M. Leisinger, president and CEO, Novartis Foundation for Sustainable Development

What is our Approach?

Our Mission
To promote sustainable social and economic development through responsible corporate human rights practices.

A professional, business-focused approach underpins all of our work. All of our projects incorporate three elements:

Direct engagement: We work with companies at every stage, from research and policy-setting to application in the field.

Impact: All of our consultancy and research is designed to be implemented in the day-to-day operations of businesses around the world. We respond to the world as it is, not as we think it should be.

Expertise: We apply and focus the capacity of one of the largest professional human rights institutes in the world, with over 100 in-house human rights experts, to the challenges facing business.

Our View
We believe that the objectives of business and the advancement of human rights are not mutually exclusive.

We believe that, when done right, business activity can be one of the most powerful drivers of human rights and development in a society.

We believe that direct engagement with the private sector is an essential method for protection and promotion of human rights in business practice.

We believe that mainstreaming human rights in companies at all levels – policy, process and people – is the most effective way of ensuring company practice that provides economic development and rights enjoyment.

The business-friendly approach of the Danish Institute for Human Rights has been instrumental in reinforcing human rights thinking into the corporate culture and systems of Eni. Our partnership with DIHR is allowing us to launch leading-edge human rights processes at the corporate level as well as on the ground in key operational areas.

Sabina Ratti, sustainability manager, Eni

For more information on the Project or our work, contact Mike Baab: .  

The Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR) is an independent, national human rights institution modelled in accordance with the UN Paris Principles. The Institute, which was established by statute in 2002, carries on the mandate vested in the Danish Centre for Human Rights in 1987. This encompasses research, education and the implementation of national and international programmes. The Institute is part of the Danish Centre for International Studies and Human Rights (DCISM), which also includes a sister institute, the Danish Institute of International Studies (DIIS).

The chief objective of DIHR is to promote and develop knowledge about human rights on a national, regional and international basis, predicated on the belief that human rights are universal, mutually interdependent and interrelated. The Institute believes that societies must be based on the rule of law, where the state protects and confers obligations on the individual while safeguarding the most disadvantaged and marginalized groups in society.

The Institute cooperates with organisations and public authorities in Denmark, with academic institutions and humanitarian organisations in other countries, as well as with the Council of Europe, the EU, the OSCE, the UN, the World Bank and a range of international donors. DIHR employs more than 100 staff and in 2006 had an annual budget of €12 million.

The Human Rights and Business Project and The Danish Institute for Human Rights

The Human Rights and Business Project is a team within the the Human Rights and Business Department of DIHR.

Being embedded in a leading national human rights institution gives the Human Rights and Business Project a number of advantages. First, all Project initiatives benefit from an internationally renowned research staff, contributing cutting-edge, interdisciplinary expertise to issues that have previously been examined only within the academic field.

Second, the Project is able to observe the development and assessment of human rights projects around the world, and apply those methodologies to the business context. DIHR researchers, advisors and project staff are involved in initiatives as diverse as security-forces training in Central Asia to HIV/AIDS prevention in Sub-Saharan Africa. This wide range of projects forms a basis of experience that the Project adapts and applies to business. From this foundation, projects can be developed quickly, based on existing models, and draw upon experts in a wide range of geographic and topic areas.

Financing
DIHR and the Human Rights and Business Project are nonprofit entities. Donors include Danida, the Council of Europe, the European Commission, the UN and the World Bank. The majority of funding of the Human Rights and Business Project comes directly from projects and partnerships with companies. All revenues from consultancy are directly reinvested in Project research and other work to promote human rights in the business sphere.

For more information on the Project or our work, contact Mike Baab: .