The human rights and business Country Guide

For companies to manage their human rights impacts, they need information about the context in which they operate. Governments and other stakeholders also need an objective overview of business-related issues in their countries to design strategies to address those impacts. The DIHR worked with local partners in more than 15 countries to provide information and recommendations to companies on how to adapt their operations to the local political and economic environment.

As part of the Human Rights and Business Country Guide project, the DIHR identified a local civil society or NHRI actor that is working to promote human rights in business. The DIHR then provided remote and face-to-face training to the partner—a program of capacity-building targeted to their mandate and priorities. Then the DIHR and the local actor collaborated to identify businesses, actors and impacts in the local context that are the highest-priority for intervention.

As part of this process, the DIHR and the local partner produced a publicly available report, the Human Rights and Business Country Guide, that provides an overview of business impacts on human rights. From there, the DIHR supported the partner in building a coalition of actors who share our vision of a world free from corporate human rights abuses.

The project ended in 2017, and all country guides (23 in total) were made available on globalnaps.org.