Grievance Mechanisms for Business and Human Rights: Strengths, Weaknesses, and Gaps

Individuals, workers and communities whose human rights are negatively impacted by corporate operations are becoming ever more vocal and successful in demanding that their grievances be addressed. Some of these grievances are projected through lawsuits under domestic or overseas judicial systems. Others are the subject of major civil society campaigns, nationally or internationally. Yet there is also a growing body of extrajudicial mechanisms in the business and human rights arena to which complainants can take their concerns. This paper aims to provide an assessment of some of the strengths and weaknesses of this group of mechanisms and the gaps they leave uncovered. The analysis is based on a mixture of background research and consultations with representatives of business, NGOs, international organisations, multistakeholder initiatives, government, academia, the legal profession and others with experience of these mechanisms in practice.

Section One offers a brief introductory discussion of the situation and role of extrajudicial grievance mechanisms within the context of wider dispute resolution processes. There follows a short overview in Section Two of each of the 11 mechanisms, or categories of mechanism, this paper addresses: namely, the Fair Labor Association, Workers Rights Consortium, International Council of Toy Industries, Voluntary Principles for Security and Human Rights, Ethical Trading Initiative, Social Accountability International, National Human Rights Institutions, OECD National Contact Points, the Compliance/Advisor Ombudsman of the World Bank Group, International Framework Agreements and the UN Global Compact. The next four sections offer an analysis of the ways in which these mechanisms tackle barriers to access (Section Three), support local solutions to grievances (Section Four), use different processes to address grievances (Section Five) and present their outcomes (Section Six).