Reclaiming the purpose of human rights due diligence

As sustainability and environmental, social and governance (ESG) expectations rise, one term consistently features on boardroom agendas: human rights due diligence (HRDD). It’s become a familiar term, yet too often it is misunderstood. RSK International Projects Group (IPG) Associate Director and Human Rights Lead Kübra Kalkandelen explores how to effectively navigate this in practice.

For some, HRDD is treated as a reputational safeguard. For others, it’s a compliance task to be outsourced. But, at its heart, as outlined in the United Nations’ Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP), HRDD is about people: identifying where harm may occur and ensuring that business operations, decisions and relationships do not cause, do not contribute to or are not directly linked to adverse human rights impacts.

The UNGPs describe HRDD as a continuous process, not a one-off assessment, and it involves four core steps:

1. Identifying and assessing actual and potential human rights impacts
2. Integrating and acting upon the findings
3. Tracking how effectively impacts are addressed
4. Communicating transparently about progress and outcomes

When delivered effectively, HRDD is not a procedural exercise; it’s a way of doing business that places people and their dignity at the centre of decision-making.

For organisations just beginning to engage with HRDD, it can easily feel abstract, yet the fundamentals are straightforward. HRDD is simply a structured way to understand where people may be at risk in your operations or supply chains and to build the internal systems needed to address those risks before they escalate. HRDD adds value by helping organisations move beyond a ‘head in the sand’ instinct and build resilient governance systems capable of identifying risks early.

In this sense, HRDD functions as a critical internal tool, helping organisations avoid the instinct to ‘look away’ from difficult parts of their value chain and instead develop practical systems for managing risks to people and, by extension, risks to the business. Effective HRDD also has great potential to reduce exposure to legal disputes, regulatory penalties, operational disruption and reputational damage, which can escalate quickly when governance systems are weak.

From risk-averse to risk-based approaches

As these issues become more widely recognised and it is common-place to work to recognised global frameworks, it’s more important than ever to be risk-based, not risk-averse. Being risk-averse means avoiding complexity or steering clear of challenging contexts. However, being risk-based means leaning in, proactively, identifying and addressing the most significant human rights risks, even when they are uncomfortable or difficult to solve.

This approach is what regulators, investors and communities expect: honesty and courage in how companies confront their potential and actual impacts.

The UNGPs offer a framework by which to understand how business responsibility is related to HRDD. Their most important and sometimes overlooked message is that the purpose of HRDD is to manage risks to people, not just risks to the business. That means:

• focusing on the severity and likelihood of human rights impacts, not their visibility or reputational weight
• moving beyond box-ticking to genuinely understand the local context
• listening to those most affected (workers, communities and civil society), not just internal teams or consultants.

In this sense, HRDD is not a report that sits on a shelf; it’s a living process that evolves with shifting social, political and environmental realities.

Beyond compliance: Why legal risk isn’t the whole story

In practice, many due diligence systems still focus on risk to the company in terms of legal exposure, reputational damage or contractual liability. Yet when HRDD becomes solely about protecting the organisation, it loses its core purpose: protecting people. We see this when:

• rights-holders are left out of project design and risk identification
• disclosures focus on what’s considered safe rather than what’s salient
• supply chain reviews stop at Tier 1 suppliers
• certification schemes replace genuine stakeholder dialogue.

What gets lost in these approaches is the ethical and operational strength of HRDD: its power to reveal uncomfortable truths early enough to act on them.

Human rights risks are always contextual. Cross-border operations demand more than standardised risk matrices or checklists. Meaningful HRDD, therefore, requires understanding:

• local labour conditions and informal economies
• power relations between employers, contractors and community leaders
• structural discrimination affecting women, Indigenous peoples and local communities, migrants and marginalised groups
• the lived experiences of those affected by land use, resource extraction or infrastructure development.

When human rights are embedded from the start, outcomes are fairer, trust is stronger and long-term resilience follows.

Human rights risks don’t exist in isolation from business goals. Companies that approach risk as a learning process are better equipped to navigate:

• regulatory and investor expectations
• community relationships and local legitimacy
• crisis situations
• the fast-changing ESG landscape.

As investors and development finance institutions align their standards with the UNGPs, those companies that prioritise meaningful engagement over minimum compliance will earn lasting credibility, not only with regulators but with rights-holders themselves.

Recent case law trends show courts are looking beyond corporate structures to the credibility of corporate oversight: what the company knew, how group‑wide policies were implemented and whether oversight worked in practice. Group policies alone do not protect a company if implementation is weak. HRDD, when meaningful, closes that gap.

A way forward

Looking ahead, the challenge is not only to meet new legal requirements, such as the mandatory HRDD (mHRDD), but also to follow global good practice reflected in frameworks such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) guidelines and the Equator Principles IV, while staying true to the deeper purpose of HRDD. That means shifting:

• from static disclosure to dynamic learning
• from box-ticking to accountability
• from performative transparency to participatory engagement.

This work is not simple, but it’s profoundly necessary. Each step towards genuine HRDD brings us closer to a business culture grounded in dignity, trust and shared value because when companies realise that human rights are not an obstacle but a bridge that is connecting people, purpose and performance, we all move closer to the kind of sustainability and resilience that truly lasts.