Evolving Mandatory Due Diligence Laws are Demanding Better Human Rights Grievance Mechanisms and Remediation Pathways in Asia-Pacific
26th September 2024
Contents
- What Are Human Rights Grievance Mechanisms
- Impact of Human Rights Due Diligence Laws
- Effectiveness Criteria for Grievance Mechanisms
- Why Effective Remediation Pathways are Crucial
- Steps for Implementing Grievance Mechanisms
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Effective grievance mechanisms and remediation protocols are essential tools for organisations to be aware of to help address and correct their negative human rights and environmental impacts. Ensuring these mechanisms work well is crucial as due diligence regulations tighten and begin extending into the Asia-Pacific region, where globalisation pressures and diverse economic, social, and legal contexts present unique challenges. This article unpacks the intersection of evolving legislation, due diligence and stakeholder engagement, with good human rights grievance mechanisms and remediation pathways.
What Are Human Rights Grievance Mechanisms and Remediation Pathways?
In essence, good grievance mechanisms are the practical expression of a company’s commitment to ongoing human rights due diligence, providing a way for stakeholders to directly influence how risks are managed, and harms are addressed.
In the context of human rights, grievance mechanisms are systems and processes to receive and process complaints and disputes that arise from business operations that adversely impact someone’s human rights.
These mechanisms should enable individuals or communities affected by a company’s activities to voice their concerns and seek remediation. When working well, even people indirectly involved in an organisation’s operations through the value chain should be able to submit a grievance.
They must be a safe and accessible pathway for communication to an organisation that is taken seriously.
Examples of Human Rights Grievance Mechanisms
- Internal Whistleblower Systems: Employees can report human rights violations anonymously within the organisation, ensuring issues are addressed internally and promptly.
- Hotlines and Helplines: Confidential phone numbers or online portals for reporting concerns which can be operated by third parties to ensure anonymity.
- Ombudsman Services: Appointing an independent ombudsman provides a formal channel for grievances related to human rights abuses, ensuring neutral investigation and resolution.
- Online Platforms: Web-based systems for submitting and tracking complaints which can include features like anonymous reporting and case management.
Effective Grievance Mechanisms Are
Source: Harvard Kennedy School
Growing Impact of Human Rights Due Diligence Laws
It’s critical to understand how quickly human rights-related laws and regulations around the world are changing and how much more important serious stakeholder engagement is becoming, including via good grievance and remediation pathways. Most notable are the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), which, when taken together, mandate knowing your value chain impacts and disclosing about them publicly. Big organisations that trigger these laws must actively identify, mitigate, monitor, and report on human rights and environmental impacts throughout their operations. Learn more about them here.
While some large multinationals operating in Asia-Pacific will trigger these legislations, mostly it will reach the region through the value chain, which is where good grievance, remediation, and engagement mechanisms will be expected and beneficial. Big buyers will want to see evidence that smaller companies are aware of, receptive to, and managing their primary human rights and environmental impacts.
Effectiveness Criteria for Grievance Mechanisms
The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises are considered the most authoritative sources for what good grievance and remediation looks like for a company. They make clear that these processes should meet specific effectiveness criteria to be impactful. As outlined by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), these criteria include legitimacy, accessibility, predictability, equitability, transparency, and being rights-compatible.
In the large, diverse, and globally integrated Asia-Pacific region, ensuring these criteria are met requires careful consideration and adaptation to where you or your business partners are doing business. For instance, mechanisms must be transparent and equitable to build trust among users, while also being accessible (to different ages, different languages, and different education backgrounds) and predictable to ensure consistent application and understanding across different contexts.
Businesses can’t have a one-size-fits-all grievance process, especially global entities with vast supply chains.
For example, for companies with various factories or outlets across Southeast Asia, some may be urban and others may be in rural, remote, and culturally and linguistically diverse environments – these areas are likely to need a range of formal and informal, culturally adapted grievance channels.
Why Effective Remediation Pathways are Crucial
It’s not just about doing a great job at receiving complaints or learning about problems – it’s also about fixing them, which is when effective remediation comes into play. Remediation refers to the actions taken to address and correct harm caused by business activities. In the context of human rights, this might involve compensation, rehabilitation, or policy changes to prevent future occurrences.
Effective remediation is about using the insights gained from the grievance processes to prevent future issues. This proactive approach can significantly reduce risk, enhance a company’s reputation, have a positive impact on workers and contribute to long-term sustainability.
The Importance of Stakeholder Engagement
Sustainability professionals will be well-versed in the need to engage stakeholders affected by their organisation’s operations. It is no different when designing, monitoring, and improving grievance and remediation pathways to increase the chances that they will reach the right people in the right ways when something goes wrong.
In the Asia-Pacific region, where diverse cultural, social, and legal contexts present unique challenges, businesses must ensure that both internal and external stakeholders are aware of these mechanisms, understand how to use them and trust the process enough to do so.
But it’s not just about stakeholders-led design, engaging stakeholders about – and through – grievance and remediation mechanisms is also a critical data-collection point for conducting human rights due diligence throughout the supply chain.
4 Practical Steps for Implementing Effective Human Rights Grievance Mechanisms
To tailor grievance mechanisms to the needs of local users across the Asia-Pacific, businesses can take several practical steps:
- Due Diligence and Local Engagement: Understanding the local context is essential. This involves conducting thorough due diligence and engaging with communities to tailor grievance mechanisms, ensuring they are inclusive and responsive to local challenges, cultural norms, and needs.
- Adapting to Local Contexts: Businesses must adapt grievance mechanisms to varying administrative capacities, resources, and cultural norms across Asia-Pacific, drawing on best practices and insights from thought leaders and the private sector.
- Linking Grievance Mechanisms to Human Rights Due Diligence: Grievance mechanisms should be integrated into broader human rights due diligence processes. They can serve as an early warning system, alerting businesses to potential human rights impacts linked to their operations, products, or services.
- Building Internal Capacity: Finally, businesses must invest in building internal capacity to operationalise grievance mechanisms effectively. This includes training, allocating resources, and establishing clear protocols for managing grievances.
Challenges in the Asia-Pacific Context
Businesses operating in Asia-Pacific face significant hurdles in implementing effective grievance mechanisms. These include resourcing constraints, the absence of strong regional networks, and the difficulty of engaging beyond tier-one suppliers to reach a broader range of stakeholders. In jurisdictions with limited corporate transparency, weaker rule of law, or varying levels of human rights protection for certain people groups, these challenges are amplified.
To exemplify how these challenges might manifest, consider the garment industry in Southeast Asia where pressures are common like high production targets, financial vulnerability, and lack of freedom of association and collective bargaining. These factors can raise barriers to people accessing and safely using grievance mechanisms and seeking remedy.
A Final Note – Take Action Now
For any sized organisation operating in Asia-Pacific, or with business partners there, it’s a strategic priority and ethical imperative to implement effective human rights grievance mechanisms and remediation pathways. For many organisations, this is likely to be a legal obligation soon, too.
For example, in the coming years, Australia is likely to expand its mandatory climate risk reporting regime to include all ESG aspects, more akin to CSRD in Europe. It’s also likely to revise the Australian Modern Slavery Act to mandate human rights due diligence, akin to CSDDD. Both of these changes will rely upon effective grievance and remediation mechanisms to identify and manage the riskiest parts of their value chain. Maturing your processes now will set the foundation for more responsible and sustainable business practices, ensuring problems are being addressed now, and enabling compliance in the future.
Need help to understand more about Human Rights Grievance Mechanisms?
Learn more in our grievance mechanism European and South African case studies.
Download our Guide to the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive
We have a team of human rights experts passionate about supporting organisations on their human rights initiatives. If you would like to learn more about our human rights services, get support developing effective grievance mechanisms, or map your value chain (like modern slavery), reach out to our experts.