SAVE THE DATE: 3-4 March 2022

ARP Consultation on HRDD, Accountability, and Access to Remedy

The next major ARP consultation will take place during 3-4 March 2022 and will focus on exploring the links between human rights due diligence (HRDD), accountability, and access to remedy. Sessions will examine the connections between HRDD regimes and

• judicial mechanisms (building on our legal liability report),
• State-based non-judicial mechanisms (building on our administrative supervision paper), and
• non-State-based grievance mechanisms (building on ARP III).

More information about the consultation and its format will be shared on our ARP IV page when it is available.

Note on meeting the UNGPs' Effectiveness Criteria

This week, OHCHR released a note summarizing ARP III guidance on meeting the UNGPs' Effectiveness Criteria.

For each criterion, the note covers what developers and operators of grievance mechanisms should be thinking about, along with a non-exhaustive list of suggestions of how to respond to such issues based on good practices observed during the ARP III work. The end of the document contains a short discussion of some key cross-cutting themes.

Enforcement of Mandatory Due Diligence: Key Design Considerations for Administrative Supervision

Building on our ARP II work, OHCHR and Shift jointly convened a series of consultations on the enforcement of mandatory human rights due diligence regimes. Based on these discussions, a joint policy paper was published in October on how administrative supervision can complement civil liability for harms in the effective enforcement of due diligence requirements.

This note builds upon earlier work of the office on mHRDD connected to ARP I:

• HRDD / legal liability report
• Issues paper on mHRDD
• Key considerations for mHRDD
• Recommendations on the EU mHRDD directive

Submission to the IGWG on the 3rd revised draft LBI

Ahead of the 7th session of the open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights (IGWG), OHCHR released a substantive submission to the IGWG regarding the third revised draft of the instrument.

The submission recommends that the provisions on mandatory human rights due diligence incorporate learnings from our work with Shift on the enforcement of due diligence regimes.

All submissions of the office to the IGWG are available on the ARP IV webpage. 

New CHRB methodology incorporates ARP III learning

In September, the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB) released their revised methodology for examining the policies, processes, and practices of some of the largest companies in the world with respect to human rights. The revised methodology now explicitly incorporates several elements from ARP III with regard to the indicators on access to remedy. Thus, companies examined by CHRB will now need to better demonstrate how they protect against retaliation of remedy seekers, address power imbalances in grievance processes, and report on how their grievance mechanism processes work in practice and feed into human rights due diligence processes.

Forthcoming Materials

Compilations of ARP Guidance: Official booklet versions of the guidance from ARPs I-III are being translated and will be published in 2022.

Interpretive Guide on Access to Remedy: Thank you to all who submitted ideas for questions to be addressed in the interpretive guide. We are currently drafting the guide, which will be published in 2022.

Simplified ARP Materials: Various materials simplifying ARP guidance (such as the effectiveness criteria note) will be shared when they are finalized in 2022.

ARP IV Report: In accordance with HRC Res. 44/15, the ARP team will submit a report to the Human Rights Council at its 50th session.

If you have suggestions of materials we should develop, or if you are producing relevant materials, please let us know at: ohchr-business-access2remedy@un.org.

Consultation on Access to Remedy in Tech

During 23-24 September, the ARP and B-Tech Project teams jointly hosted a multi-stakeholder consultation on access to remedy in the tech sector. Over the course of two days, four sessions were held to discuss challenges and opportunities with regard to accountability and access to remedy for tech-related human rights harms. Recordings of the sessions are now available:

• Remedying adverse human rights impacts of technology companies through the courts
• State-based non-judicial mechanisms and their contribution to access to remedy in cases of tech-related human rights abuses
• Understanding the perspectives and needs of affected stakeholders
• The role of technology companies in remedying human rights harms connected to their products and services

GRAM Partnership Webinar

In October, the ARP team hosted a webinar for the Grievance Redress and Accountability Mechanism (GRAM) Partnership on designing and administering grievance mechanisms.

The webinar focused on practical ways of ensuring grievance mechanism legitimacy and rights compatibility, and covered tips for how to efficiently meet the UNGPs’ effectiveness criteria.

Select quotes are available from some of the webinar's speakers, including

• Jennifer Zerk
• Anna Triponel
• Alexandra Guaqueta
• David Simpson.