Human rights and private enterprise

Companies are well-advised to contribute actively to the debate about “Human Rights and Private Enterprise”. This gives them the opportunity to submit and substantiate the definition of ambiguous terms (e.g sphere of influence, collaboration, preventive action). Through guidelines of their own, they can achieve transparency both internally and externally, identify which laws need to be complied with in order to achieve objectives and establish what must, should and can norms are assured. In this way they can preserve self-interest in a constructive manner rather than being confronted with constricting definitions and find themselves in the position of disclaimer or even human rights violator as a result.
An example of what it means to be both constructive and pro-active in preserving corporate interests and an example of what it means to formulate a legitimate private sector point of view can be found in the BLIHR initiative.

The “Business Leaders Initiative on Human Rights” is a voluntary program. Companies participating in the BLIHR are committed to finding and developing ways to integrate human rights in corporate decision-making processes and promoting existing initiatives.

BLIHR aims to support its member companies in operationalizing human rights in their corporate policy and business practice. All actors and different sectors of society play an important role in the realization of human rights. The BLIHR is committed to achieving a strong base for sustainable corporate self-awareness.

To achieve these objectives and to be able to understand the topic of human rights more fully, the BLIHR companies are leading dialogs with various NGOs, researchers and scientists, UN institutions and other corporate networks. Furthermore, the companies participating in the BLIHR program take a transparent and positive stance in addressing the terms of the “United Nations Norms on Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights”. BLIHR- participating companies wish to know more about the significance and benefit of the draft norms through projects and the development of tools to realize the implementation of human rights standards in everyday business life. A central part of this analysis is how far the draft norms support and promote the realization of human rights in business practice, what constitutes an adequate division of labor among various actors in society, where the influence of companies begins and ends and what companies are actually responsible for.