It is designed to complement a company or government’s other impact assessment and due diligence processes and to be framed by appropriate international human rights principles and conventions.
"[2] In 2005, the Secretary-General of the United Nations appointed John Ruggie to the post of Special Representative on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations.
This broad task included a request "to develop materials and methodologies for undertaking human rights impact assessments of the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises".
The process should include assessing actual and potential human rights impacts, integrating and acting upon the findings, and tracking as well as communicating their performance.
"[3] Little guidance existed to define the process of assessing human rights impacts when Ruggie was called on to establish methodologies, and he stated publicly in 2006 that "the dimensions of this task unfortunately turn out to be beyond the resource and time constraints of the mandate".
The HRCA is described by the Danish Institute as "a comprehensive tool designed to detect human rights risks in company operations.
It covers all internationally recognized human rights and their impact on all stakeholders, including employees, local communities, customers, and host governments.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC), in collaboration with the London-based International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) produced a Guide to Human Rights Impact Assessment and Management Road-Testing Draft in August 2007, which it updated in June 2012 [15] Eni announced in January 2010 that it had piloted the IFC/IBLF tool, and the IBLF reports that other companies have also been part of a road-testing process.
Washington, D.C.-based law firm Foley Hoag conducts Human Rights Impact Assessments, which are confidential, with the exception of its HRIA on BP's Tangguh project in Papua, Indonesia.
On Common Ground, a Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada-based consulting group, was hired to conduct a Human Rights Impact Assessment for the Marlin mine in Guatemala, owned by Goldcorp.
Commissioned years after production (and community revolt) had begun at the mine, local conditions and project design had all changed drastically by the time assessors arrived.
[21] Oxfam America completed an impact assessment focused on migrant labor in the tobacco-producing areas of the southern United States using the Rights and Democracy tool.
[24] Nomogaia's Green Resources HRIA was conducted a decade after the company had developed pine and eucalyptus plantations in southern Tanzania, but prior to large-scale harvesting.
Assessment revealed major human rights violations, from inadequate housing, transportation, food and wages, to failure to uphold occupational health and safety standards and provide clean water, to breaches of labor contracts and international commitments.
A few have focused on other aspects of public policy, such as the 2014 assessment of the human rights impacts of Intellectual Property in agriculture,[28] the methodology for which was developed by the Quaker UN Office[29] and the Berne Declaration.
Today, Canada, Norway, the United States and a handful of other developed countries regularly undertake national environmental reviews of trade policies.
Human rights also bring economic and social benefits by recalling the necessity of going beyond aggregate models to identify differential impacts on different sectors of the population, and by calling for particular attention to be paid to vulnerable groups.
Some of the most comprehensive work on HRIAs for Trade Agreements has been conducted by UN staffer Simon Walker and Warwick Law Professor James Harrison (independently).
[36][37][38] The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and 3D -> THREE have been amongst the vocal proponents of HRIA for Trade Agreements, documenting both the need for such assessments, and the progress made in the field.
The Canada–Colombia Free Trade Agreement, requires the governments of both Canada and Colombia to produce an annual human rights impact assessment of the FTA.
[43] This handbook, as described by NORAD, "aims at providing the user with a practical tool for enhancing the human rights profile of development programmes".
[45] Costa Rica's national human rights institution undertook an ex ante impact assessment of the intellectual property provisions of the Dominican Republic–Central America Free Trade Agreement in 2005.
[50] In 2017 the Economic Commission for Africa published a Human Rights Impact Assessment of the planned African CFTA (Continental Free Trade Agreement).
The Swiss NGO Alliance Sud commissioned a proto-Human Rights Impact Assessment of a planned trade agreement with Mercosur.