Business and Human Rights: CRIN response to adoption of the Guiding Principles

On January 31, 2011, the Child Rights Information Network (CRIN) submitted detailed comments to the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General (SRSG) on transnational corporations and other business enterprises as part of the Special Representative's public consultation process on the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. 

To bring the then draft Guiding Principles in line with the Special Representative's mandate “to give special attention to...children,” our comments suggested that the SRSG amend the Principles to embrace and fully incorporate children's rights,  both recognising the many challenges children face in their interactions with business enterprises and addressing specific situations in which improvements must be made.  Among other things, these comments highlighted the need for the Principles to:

• Explicitly reference the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most comprehensive international framework for children's rights;
• Facilitate children's participation in human rights due diligence investigations and corporate policy-making;
• Ensure that information regarding corporate policies and actions relevant to children's rights is made available to children in a manner and form that they can understand;
• Provide further guidance as to how business enterprises can engage with children whose interests will potentially be affected by a company decision; and
• Increase children's access to justice by making remedial procedures child-friendly, providing for immediate and effective relief where children's rights have been violated, reducing barriers to formal judicial channels, and enabling children to reach effective and appropriate non-judicial mechanisms. 

Regrettably, upon review of the Guiding Principles as submitted to and adopted by the Human Rights Council, it is clear that children's rights continue to be ignored.  It is with great disappointment that we see no additional references to children, let alone even a single substantive discussion of the rights particular to children that have long been a matter of international law.  As we have written before, we must again state that “it is difficult to imagine th[e Guiding Principles] could provide any meaningful guidance for States and business enterprises seeking to 'protect, respect and remedy' the human rights of children.” 

We cannot see how the adopted Principles are consonant with the “special attention” envisioned for children in the Special Representative's mandate.  Given this failure, we now call on those responsible for monitoring and implementing the Principles to revisit the issue of business and children's rights and ensure that the newly adopted Principles in practice genuinely respect children's rights, fully address children's unique vulnerability, and provide thorough and thoughtful direction on the subject of business and children's rights to States and business enterprises alike.

Further Information:

• UN: Council endorses Business and Human Rights Guiding Principles amidst criticism from NGOs (16 June 2011) 
• CRIN Submission on the UN Draft Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights (1 February 2011)
• Read more about business and human rights
• Visit the Business and Human Rights Resource Center