A Guide to Human Rights Due Diligence for Lawyers

Business clients are increasingly seeking their lawyers’ advice and assistance with human rights due diligence (HRDD). Their clients must navigate compliance with a growing array of legal  requirements and soft law standards defining the expectations of governments, investors, and  society that businesses respect human rights. Consequently, new opportunities are arising for lawyers to provide services and advice to businesses on HRDD.

This guide, intended for U.S. and foreign lawyers alike, is an indispensable resource on HRDD that should assist lawyers with understanding not only the fundamentals of HRDD but also crucial aspects of the process.

Part I of the book examines the essentials of HRDD, including the HRDD process, lawyers’ ethical obligations related to HRDD, and key due diligence legal requirements. In Part II, practical aspects of implementing HRDD are explored, including corporate governance, HRDD’s relationship to compliance approaches, use of grievance mechanisms, stakeholder engagement, gender-sensitive HRDD, and consultation with indigenous peoples.

In this rapidly developing area, lawyers also need to be aware of key developments that will affect how their business clients perform HRDD. Therefore, the final section, Part III, addresses four of those key areas: suppliers in value chains, the financial sector, the intersection of environmental law and climate change issues with HRDD, and high-risk security situations, such as those in countries that are politically unstable or undergoing conflict.

The goal of the expert contributions to this book is to further lawyers’ understanding and to facilitate their role in assisting businesses to respect human rights, which should, at the same time, foster businesses’ contribution to sustainable development and the social factor of ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance).

Dr. Corinne E. Lewis, a partner in the Brussels-based law firm Lex Justi, is an international human  rights lawyer with a specialization in business and human rights. She provides legal advice to a  range of clients based on her corporate law background as in-house counsel with a major multinational company and her 30 years of international human rights law experience, including  work at the United Nations. She also has taught human rights law and public international law courses at US and UK universities. Having lived and worked in the United States and multiple countries in Asia and Europe, she brings an international perspective to her diverse projects. In addition to a PhD in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science, Dr. Lewis has an LLM (with honors) from Georgetown University and a JD from Indiana University. She is Immediate past co-chair of the ABA International Law Section’s International Human Rights Committee.