A/HRC/31/50 85. Various NGOs highlighted the importance of adopting legislation to prevent negative human rights impacts and establish mechanisms for human rights due diligence, including prevention, mitigation and redress for any such negative impacts that a private business enterprise may cause or contribute to through its own activities or through business relationships directly linked to its operations, products or services. Various NGOs recommended that States adopt policy and regulatory measures to ensure that companies are required to conduct human rights due diligence when operating at home or abroad, including through their business relationships and throughout their supply chains. Parent companies should have a duty to ensure their subsidiaries’ compliance. Particular attention should be paid to high-risk zones, including in conflict zones or occupied territories, in order to prevent companies from contributing to human rights violations. 86. Other NGOs noted that States should be required to establish legislation that defines appropriate criminal and civil liability in order to sanction companies that have caused or contributed to human rights abuses. Due diligence processes must involve meaningful consultations with those likely to be affected by corporate activities, including obtaining the free, prior and informed consent of indigenous peoples. Finally, most NGOs noted that the instrument could fill in the gaps of the Guiding Principles and stressed the need for the instrument to cover the obligation of transnational corporations to respect all human rights, including national and international norms on human rights, labour and the environment. 87. One delegation noted that entities with legal personality should be included in the instrument and asked whether the instrument could include mechanisms to ensure the enforcement of human rights. A panellist responded that human rights law obligations could be imposed on entities that were not international legal persons. In response to another delegation, a panellist noted that jurisdictions of host and home States could be considered to ensure that transnational corporations are held accountable. Other delegations noted the particular need to protect against human rights violations in conflict zones. G. Panel VII. Legal liability of transnational corporations and other business enterprises: what standard for corporate legal liability and for what conduct? 88. One panellist noted that a number of principles should be kept in mind when establishing standards of legal liability, including: a focus on victims; a differentiation between various types of responsibilities, including criminal, civil and administrative; and the flexibility for States to apply standards in national systems. Achieving legal certainty in the use of these standards could make it possible to avoid frivolous litigation and facilitate mutual assistance and cooperation among States. The panellist also noted that parent companies should be held accountable not only for their own conduct, but also for the conduct of their subsidiaries and supply-chain partners. Moreover, the panellist highlighted that corporations’ direct due diligence efforts were not enough and that corporate culture needed to change, including existing approaches to piercing the “corporate veil”. For the panellist, the parent company should be accountable as a matter of principle and would have to prove the opposite. 89. Another panellist noted the necessity to determine, from a victim-centred, problemsolving and pragmatic approach, which types of conduct would be considered violations under a legally binding instrument. The panellist also noted that the due diligence approach was essential as it went far beyond national or international liability and dealt with the expectations of society, which have much more serious economic impacts than a long legal process. The panellist furthermore stressed that victims of gross human rights abuses needed a jurisdictional forum, which can be achieved through an injection of financial and non-financial resources at the domestic level. 17