Human Rights Impact Assessment in the Context of Biofuels: Addressing the Human Right to Food and the Human Right to Water

Abstract

The original mandate of the UN Special Representative on Business and Human Rights said that he should „develop materials and methodologies for undertaking human rights impact assessments.‟ Since then, tools for human rights impact assessment (HRIA) have developed by different actors. This article reviews two such tools, both of which are up for revision in 2010. One is by the International Finance Corporation, International Business Leaders Forum and Global Compact, the other by the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels. The article finds that substantive human rights and human rights principles are well understood by the former, while the latter seems to have an inadequate understanding of crucial human rights principles, such as non-discrimination, but the latter has some procedural strengths as compared to the former.