"Blog: Are National Contact Points improving through peer review?", Nov 2017

By learning from experience, accountability offices like the National Contact Points (NCPs) [...] can be more effective at resolving conflicts among companies and the people affected by their operations. In order to improve, NCPs volunteer to undergo a review by their peers. As businesses, governments, and civil society organizations gather in Geneva to mark the progress of the UN Guiding Principles on Businesses and Human Rights (UNGPs), we are eager to ensure that the peer review process is as effective as possible... [T]he International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR), Accountability Counsel, and OECD Watch researched whether the peer review process is really improving the effectiveness of NCPs overall. While our qualitative analysis is still ongoing, we have thus far found many ways in which the NCP peer reviews can be improved. Some of the key interim recommendations are to make the process more transparent and accessible... Other recommendations are tied directly to ensuring that a review leads to effective change.