Developing a collaborative approach to human rights impact assessments

This project, led by the Columbia Centre for Sustainable Investment, the Danish Institute for Human Rights and the Sciences Po Law School Clinic, seeks to develop a robust model for a multi-stakeholder human rights impact assessment (MS HRIA) that can assist stakeholders in jointly undertaking a HRIA that is considered credible by all sides and can help to address the power imbalances that often exist between companies and communities around private sector projects.

Through desktop research and interviews with experts in the field of impact assessment, the project team will examine how company- and community-led HRIA methodologies may inform and learn from each other, and will explore how joint initiatives could benefit from the stakeholders’ respective access to documentation and people. Based on this, the project team will develop a methodology and model for a multi-stakeholder HRIA that is jointly led by a company and community. Based on learning from the project pilot, the multi-stakeholder HRIA methodology and model will be refined and publicly disseminated to interested stakeholders.

The intended beneficiaries of such a multi-stakeholder HRIA include communities seeking greater accountability around business activities that may affect them, companies interested in ensuring that their projects do not adversely affect the human rights of communities, employees who are employed by companies or employed in the companies’ supply chains, civil society organisations that support communities or companies in addressing and mitigating negative human rights impacts, and potentially host-governments seeking to meet their obligations to protect human rights and working to ensure that business activities do not negatively affect rights-holders.

You can find a more detailed project description in