“Whitepaper: Responsible Business Conduct: Understanding Human Rights Due Diligence”, July 2016

...[R]esponsible business conduct issues – once the sole provenance of responsible sourcing teams and CSR professionals – will likely become integral considerations for compliance and legal teams as well…Human rights due diligence is the process of identifying and seeking to prevent and mitigate adverse human impacts…[T]he identification and remediation of “salient” human rights risks does tend to…protect businesses from substantial enterprise risks as well, particularly in the form of the reputational impact and possible consequent financial impact on an organization should it be found to be in breach of human rights within its supply chain…Both the MNE Guidelines and the UN Guiding Principles…call for companies to respect internationally recognized norms regardless of what national law in a particular jurisdiction might call for…Integrating human rights due diligence into other diligence processes is…recommended because of the links that have been uncovered between corruption, money laundering and human rights impacts, particularly human trafficking and human smuggling…[B]usinesses are supposed to first determine where their impacts might be and then determine the scope of their leverage to address them and whether they should seek to increase that leverage or sever the business relationship(s) implicated.”…