Human rights due diligence
Human rights due diligence (HRDD) is an ongoing, risk-based process through which an enterprise identifies and assesses actual or potential human-rights impacts, integrates findings and acts, tracks effectiveness, and communicates how impacts are addressed. It covers impacts caused, contributed to, or directly linked through operations, products, services, or business relationships.
In simple terms
Human rights due diligence starts with risks to people, not only risks to the company. Under the United Nations Guiding Principles, the process includes assessing impacts, integrating findings into decisions, taking appropriate action, tracking results, and communicating responses. Its scale and complexity should reflect the enterprise’s circumstances and severity of impacts. HRDD is ongoing because activities, suppliers, contexts, and evidence change. Supply chain due diligence may apply similar steps across human-rights, environmental, integrity, or other responsible-business issues, whereas HRDD keeps internationally recognized human rights as its central reference point.
Why it matters
A policy statement or supplier audit cannot show whether severe impacts are being prevented or remedied. HRDD helps prioritize by severity, listen to affected people, and connect findings to purchasing, product, and remedy decisions. It is relevant to risks such as modern slavery and can reveal how an activity intersects with environmental justice or climate justice. The applicable legal consequences still depend on jurisdiction and instrument.
Example
A manufacturer maps high-risk recruitment corridors, speaks confidentially with migrant workers, checks fees and document retention, and changes contracts and purchasing practices. It tracks repayment and recurrence rather than closing the case after an audit. The process coordinates with supply chain due diligence but gives priority to the severity of impacts on workers.
How it differs
Supply chain due diligence
Human rights due diligence centers impacts on internationally recognized human rights; supply chain due diligence may cover a broader issue set and is specifically organized around supply-chain and business-relationship risks.