Co-authored by Sarah Zoen, Senior Advisor, Private Sector Department at Oxfam America.

Photo by Rene Schwietzke (CC BY 2.0)

huffingtonpost – Numerous companies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and human rights practitioners have conducted human rights impact assessments in recent years. For instance, in 2012 Kuoni partnered with TwentyFifty Limited and Tourism Concern to assess its human rights impacts in Kenya. More recently, NomoGaia piloted a tool for evaluating the human rights implications of the Disi Water Conveyance Project in Jordan.

A Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) is a process that identifies the potential and actual human rights impacts of a corporate project and recommends how to prevent, mitigate and/or address these impacts. HRIAs are different from Environmental Impact Assessments because of their holistic approach. Based on the inter-relatedness and indivisibility of human rights, they cover both environmental and social issues. HRIAs are different from Social Impact Assessments because their standards are anchored in binding national and international legal frameworks. This is important because these frameworks clearly identify duty-bearers and rights-holders. Tiếp tục đọc “Who is in charge? A key question for human rights impact assessments” →