Our Framework
The Local Impact Hub framework helps you to better understand how business activities may directly or indirectly have a negative impact on rights-holders throughout the value chain.
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts on land, property rights or tenure security. This includes customary land rights that may not be recognized under national law. Key aspects are recognition of use, control and transfer rights of land and natural resources; recognition and protection of collective ownership and customary tenure systems; freedom from arbitrary deprivation; protection from illegitimate use and/or expropriation of land and resources; and non-discrimination.
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts on the livelihoods or means of subsistence of local communities. Key aspects of livelihoods include access to or use of natural resources that local, particularly Indigenous Peoples, depend on for their physical, economic, social, cultural and/or spiritual well-being.
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts on the right to food, including access to cultivable land for poor communities or marginalized groups. Key aspects of the standard include the following; availability, accessibility, adequacy, and sustainability.
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy forced physical and economic displacement. Involuntary resettlement is only permitted in exceptional circumstances, when, inter alia, the displacement is undertaken solely for the purpose of promoting the general welfare, consistent with international human rights obligations, and no viable alternatives to meeting those general welfare objectives are available. In such cases, legal protections must be put in place to ensure full respect for human rights before, during and after eviction.
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts on health, including but not limited to potential for community exposure to water-borne, water-based, water-related, vector-borne diseases, and communicable diseases, as well as sexual and reproductive health and rights. . Key aspects of this standard include: availability, accessibility, acceptability, good quality, non-discrimination, equity, participation, accountability, underlying determinants, education, and comprehensive family planning information and services.
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts on the right to a healthy environment in accordance with the precautionary principle, including but not limited to any adverse impacts of exposure to hazardous materials and substances. Key aspects of this standard include an environment that isn’t harmful to one’s health and wellbeing and that is protected, through pollution prevention, conservation, and use of sustainable development.
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts on community health and safety, including through ensuring safety of infrastructure construction, operation, and decommissioning, and implementing emergency preparedness and response planning commensurate with the risks.
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts on biodiversity.
Companies should prevent and/or mitigate climate-related risks in their operations and value chain and its resilience to those risks; (b) the impacts it will have on the climate resilience of local communities and ecosystems; and (c) the effects on efforts to mitigate climate change.
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts on indigenous peoples’ rights over the lands, territories or resources (which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used), cultures or livelihoods, including the rights of indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation or recent contact to live freely in that condition according to their culture. Companies will consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) before implementing activities that may affect them
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts on indigenous peoples’ cultural rights.Cultural rights include the right of everyone, especially marginalized and disadvantaged groups, to participate in cultural life, to act freely, to choose his or her identity, to engage in one’s own cultural and religious practices, and to express oneself in the language of one’s choice. Cultural rights also include the right to learn about one’s culture and that of others, and to receive quality education with due regard for cultural identity
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts on cultural heritage, tangible or intangible, and cultural practices.
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts on the right to water and sanitation. Key aspects of the right to water and sanitation include: availability, quality, acceptability, accessibility, and affordability. If the project or program involves water or sanitation services, it should advance the right to water and sanitation.
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts on the right to adequate housing. Key conditions of the right to adequate housing include: security of tenure; affordability; habitability; availability of services, materials, facilities and infrastructure; accessibility; location; and cultural adequacy.
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts on the right to education. Key aspects of the right to education include the following: availability, physical accessibility, economic accessibility, non-discrimination, acceptability, and adaptability.
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts on the right to social security. Key aspects of the right to social security include: availability, social risks and contingencies, adequacy, and accessibility.
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts on decent work conditions as captivated in the core labor standards and other relevant ILO conventions. Decent working conditions include freedom, equality, security, and human dignity. It involves opportunities for work that deliver a fair income; provide security and social protection for workers and their families; offer better prospects for personal development which also encourage social integration; give people the freedom to express their concerns, to organize, and to participate in decisions that affect their lives; and guarantee equal opportunities and treatment for all.
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts on a secure workplace that is safe and healthy.
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts on the right to freedom of association and collective bargaining
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy forced labour or the use of child labor, including human trafficking.
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts on the access to information in a form and format that is accessible and readily, understandable and in a timely manner so as to facilitate a full, informed, effective, and meaningful participation in decisions and processes to whom it may affect.
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts on the right to freedom of assembly and freedom of expression
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts based on any distinction, exclusion, or preference made on the basis of an illegitimate distinguishing personal characteristic
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts that cause, contribute to, or exacerbate gender inequality and discrimination.
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts on public interest and impede the creation of conditions for the realization of human rights, such as corruption.
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts that cause, contribute to, or exacerbate conflict. Conflict can be defined as, but not limited to, violence between population groups, violence committed by the state against civilians or opposition groups, or violence committed by non-state groups against civilians.
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts that cause, contribute to or exacerbate gender-based violence.
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts on the right to privacy.
Companies should prevent, mitigate and/or remedy adverse impacts that cause, contribute to or exacerbate unlawful or excessive use of force utilized against persons, including those involved with or opposed to the the company, and that persons are not subject to arbitrary arrest or detention.
The company should establish or participate in effective operational-level grievance mechanisms for individuals and communities who may be adversely impacted. In addition, potentially affected communities must be made aware of and have access to an independent accountability mechanism. Use of a operational-level grievance mechanisms or independent accountability mechanism shall not replace access to judicial remedy and vice versa.
The Local Impact Hub framework support companies in identifying and addressing negative impacts on rights-holders throughout their business operations and value chain. It’s based on the UNGPs and the notion that “human rights due diligence can be included within broader enterprise riskmanagement systems, provided that it goes beyond simply identifying and managing material risks to the company itself, to include risks to rights-holders.”
The LIH framework draws on internationally recognised human rights and other standards to support a better understanding of how companies may directly or indirectly have a negative impact on rights-holders. Negative impacts are categorised per rights-topic and sub-issue, linking groups of adverse impacts to specific rights and rights-holders, to support companies with identifying risks and adverse impacts.
At a first glance the LIH framework does not follow the conventional distribution across Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) impacts. From an ESG perspective, the LIH framework focusses mostly on issues in the social domain. A closer look shows that LIH framework does include environmental and governance impacts and links it with impacts on rights holders. Thus allowing for a more holistic approach to negative impacts on rights-holders crosscutting all ESG issues. Companies will benefit from this approach since it automatically puts people and planet at the centre of their due diligence in line with the UNGPs and OECD guidelines.
Rights-holders are individuals or groups that have rights as elaborated in international recognised human rights treaties. Companies can impact virtually all human rights; as such, all internationally recognised human rights are envisaged by the corporate responsibility to respect. According to the UNGPs companies are required to consider, at minimum, the rights expressed in the International Bill of Human Rights (consisting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights) and the International Labour Organization’s eight core conventions outlined in the Declaration of Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work (addressing non-discrimination, bonded and forced labour, child labour, and freedom of association). Depending on the circumstances companies may need to consider additional standards as relevant in the particular context or when dealing with vulnerable groups, such as women, children, indigenous peoples and others.
Practical examples are labour rights-holders, such as employees, contractors and subcontractors, or day labourers who aren’t allowed to unionise. Environmental rights-holders could be local communities whose water supply, access or quality is impacted or farmers with impacted lands. While civil rights-holders could be for example victims of private security forces or citizens affected by corruption.
Companies are supported to identify the rights-holders and (affected) stakeholders by having a clear understanding of the rights and rights-holders that are at risk or adversely impacted. In turn, companies can uplift their stakeholder engagement by including the insights of the rights-holders and (affected) stakeholders when developing measures to prevent, mitigate or remedy the adverse impact.
The LIH framework builds on the Human Rights Risk Assessment Standard by the Coalition for Human Rights in Development. The Standard is used in the context of development finance and aimed towards financial institutions. It is developed over a two-year period through consultations with relevant experts in human rights, development, and impact assessment. The HuRRA Standard has undergone expert review and adapted to be applicable for all sectors; becoming the LIH framework.