Submission to the targeted updates of the OECD guidelines for multinational enterprises

The Danish Institute for Human Rights (the Institute) welcomes updates to the OECD Guidelines, including the increased focus on role of governments, the strengthening of National Contact Points (NCPs), recognition of the importance of stakeholder engagement, and the focus on environment and climate and technology.

The Institute comments called for the targeted updates to:

• Emphasise rightsholders and meaningful stakeholder engagement as key to responsible business conduct.
• Clarify that the OECD Guidelines’ expectations apply to a business’s full value chain, not only upstream supply chains, as well as to public or semi-public entities acting as economic actors.
• Clarify expectations on companies with respect to non-financial disclosures.
• Clarify the full scope of human rights impacts of tech and the impacts that tech have on various stakeholder groups.
• Strengthen NCPs’ role as a key avenue of redress for rightsholders, including by referring specifically to national human rights institutions as potential members of NCPs and experts with whom NCPs should engage meaningfully.

The Institute's submission draws from the expertise of the Human Rights and Business Department, which has worked for 20 years with companies, states and civil society to build a global environment in which negative impacts on human rights by business activities are minimised, including through implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines.