Human Rights
Principle 1:
Businesses should support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights.
Principle 2:
Business should ensure that their own operations are not complicit in human rights abuses.
“The Global Compact is a voluntary initiative to promote good corporate citizenship. I want to stress that it is not, and must not be, a mere public relations exercise. A commitment to the Global Compact has to lead to concrete actions in support of the core principles. None of this is meant as a substitute for action by governments. Rather, the Compact is a platform for showing how markets can be made to serve the needs of society as a whole.”
Sergio Viera de Mello, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Click here for a PDF version of a brief Powerpoint presentation outlining the Human Rights Principles.
Key Documents:
- Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)
- The aim of this Declaration is to set international standards for the protection of the rights and freedoms of the individual.
- All countries in the world recognize the Declaration and it has been translated into over 3,000 languages and dialects.
- The preamble of the UDHR calls on every individual and "every organ of society" to help promote respect for the rights and freedoms the UDHR outlines. "Every organ of society" is generally considered to include businesses.
- Article 29 of the UDHR states that "Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible." This is widely understood to include business.
- The International Bill of Human Rights
- The rights laid down in the UDHR have been further elabourated in seven international treaties including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
- The UDHR and the two covenants are together referred to as the International Bill of Human Rights. All the rights in the International Bill of Human Rights are universal, interrelated, interdependent and indivisible. The rights enumerated in international human rights treaties are, in many cases, incorporated in national laws.