Business and human rights: Policy commitments and disclosure in the extractive sector

The International Business Leaders Forum has been actively promoting the positive role that the private sector can play in human rights for over 4 years. It has worked with its member companies and other key stakeholders to promote international leadership in the area and has produced two publications in collaboration with Amnesty International in order to help move the debate forward. Human rights: is it any of your business was published in 2000 and serves as a practical guide for managers. This year Business and human rights: a geography of risk was published to highlight the human rights risks associated with the business

operations of companies in eleven different industry sectors. Further details about the Forum's human rights programme are given at the end of this document. 

This document takes a snapshot of the progress made by seven multinational companies in the extractive sector. The document is intended to be used as the foundation for a comparison of existing policies and practices among a peer group of companies.

The companies that feature in this exercise (BG, BP, BHP Billiton, BOC, Premier Oil, Rio Tinto, Shell) were selected on the basis of a request from BG Group, a member company of the IBLF. The framework for the exercise was developed by the IBLF. The categories featured are adapted from the IBLF/Amnesty International publication Human rights: is it any of your business? and the following broad topics are covered:

• Policy commitments

• Assurance mechanisms/management systems

• Disclosure strategies

• Engagement in global human rights initiatives

It is based purely on publicy-available company sources, including websites, annual reports and social reports. The sources used are listed in Appendix I. Every effort has been made to ensure that the information is comprehensive, and it is presented verbatim where possible. The research was carried out between March and April 2002.