ABSTRACT
The release of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in 2011 marked the launch of the first official global standard for businesses to prevent, address and remedy adverse impacts associated with their activities. They also marked the beginning of a decade-plus of notable attempts by government agencies and international organizations to encourage outright business integration of human rights-sensitive and transparency-focused operational efforts. The “decade of norms” has been followed by a nearly concurrent “decade of data transformation.” Mandatory human rights disclosure regulations have been introduced across OECD countries. This has led businesses to shift toward adopting impact assessment frameworks that represent their own social and human capital strategy and reflect their operational footprint and their ecosystem of suppliers, customers and partners. In turn, this has led to the emergence of knowledge platforms that aid data collection and visualization of a variety of metrics. Practical approaches to human rights risks stem from several tools, from event-based metrics (mainly for forecasting purposes) to survey-based metrics (which focus on the evolution of a target population at risk). The launch of digital platforms has provided the much-needed infrastructure to help reconcile the frequency and severity of human rights abuses.
