The UK Action Plan on Business and Human Rights will bring little comfort to victims of corporate abuse

4 September 2013

The UK Government has set out its strategy (“Good Business: Implementing the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights”) for implementing the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which were endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council in June 2011. The Action Plan is structured around three pillars: the State duty to protect human rights; the corporate responsibility to respect human rights; and access to remedy.

The Action Plan is a welcome restatement of the government’s expectations of all business enterprises domiciled in the UK to respect human rights. But the strategy consists of little more than repeating the tired formula of encouraging and providing incentives to business to act more responsibly.