Access to remedy is one of the three core pillars of the UN’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and an essential part of effective human rights due diligence. Access to remedy means that when human rights abuses occur in a company’s supply chain, they should provide for or cooperate in providing fair and just remedy.
For access to remedy to be effective, company grievance mechanisms are essential. Automakers should work individually and collectively to establish formal mechanisms whereby external stakeholders across their supply chains can raise grievances regarding adverse human rights impacts in their supply chain to an impartial entity.
Robust industry grievance mechanisms can be one of the main contributions that automakers can make to solving human rights abuses that occur in their supply chains. They can also serve as crucial early warning systems for companies and can provide invaluable information for broader human rights due diligence processes. This can enable problems to be addressed early before they escalate as well as helping to identify patterns over time, thus helping a company to manage risks effectively.
What can automakers do?
- Put in place formal mechanisms whereby workers, suppliers, suppliers’ workers (in any tier) and other external rights-holders can raise grievances regarding adverse human rights impacts in their supply chain to an impartial entity. These mechanisms should be easily available to rights-holders across the company’s supply chain.
- Disclose data about the practical operation of their grievance mechanisms, such as the number of grievances filed, addressed, and resolved, or an evaluation of the effectiveness of the mechanism.
- Put in place remedy processes that enable them to determine appropriate remedy for human rights abuses that occur in their supply chain
- Disclose information about how their remedy processes operate in practice (for example quantitative information regarding the types of allegations raised and qualitative case studies of the process in action).
- Involve impacted stakeholders in the determination of remedy.