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Principles 5 and 6 - Children's rights in the marketplace; and how business can respect and support children's rights when developing products or services; and in marketing and advertising
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Principles 7, 8, 9 and 10 - Business and children's rights as it relates to issues of environment and land use, human rights and security issues, actions in emergencies - conflict and natural or man-made disasters; and supporting efforts by government and civil society to fulfil children's.
A. Two key concepts here are "respect" and "support":
RESPECT means avoiding the infringement of the human rights of others and addressing adverse impacts that may occur. In short, don't cause harm and "you break it you bought it so if your firm has caused harm to human rights, the minimum required is that you'll fix the situation and stop future harm from occurring as a result of your operations, products, services or business relationships. Avoiding harm to human rights is the minimum required of all businesses everywhere whether or not they are participants in the Global Compact.
SUPPORT means additional voluntary actions going beyond respect for human rights to make a positive contribution to the advancement of human rights. When we speak of support or promotion of human rights, we are speaking of mostly outwardly oriented actions that increase the business? positive impacts on society.
We see a trend in a growing number of companies that deliberately and explicitly are taking these kinds of actions. Business action in support of human rights can be through core business activities, social investment or strategic philanthropy, public policy engagement or advocacy, and/or working in partnership and other collective action, including with other businesses and other societal actors.
Many companies have grander aspirations and visions of the role of their business in society than avoiding harm and are thus keen to go beyond just respect for human rights by also supporting promoting the enjoyment of human rights, especially in ways that are relevant to their business. This is actively encouraged. Likewise, stakeholder expectations often extend to the belief that companies can and should make a positive contribution to the realization of human rights where they are in a position to do so. And there can be strong business reasons for doing so, including securing the social license to operate, boosting employee morale and employee and brand loyalty, developing or expanding new markets, spurring innovation in products and services etc.
The important thing to know about support for human rights though is that it cannot be a trade-off for not respecting human rights in other areas. Support for human rights is encouraged and welcome, but it cannot be a substitute for harm to human rights that a business may be causing or contributing to. This is import- ant because philanthropy has been the area that many businesses have focused on
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