A/HRC/8/16 page 21 “Human Rights Principles for Companies”, which state, inter alia, that “companies should establish procedures to ensure that all operations are examined for their potential impact on human rights, and safeguards to ensure that company staff are never complicit in human rights abuses”.60 Human Rights Watch has also published reports on allegedly complicit behaviour of companies.61 Other advocacy groups are increasingly making allegations against companies for their indirect involvement in human rights abuses, often in the public arena. 69. As noted above, in a recent OHCHR report prepared for the Special Representative, mapping the types of allegations against companies, approximately 41 per cent of the 320 cases were of indirect forms of company involvement in abuse.62 The report highlights the range of allegations of indirect involvement that may be made against companies, from complaints that companies provided the means to carry out abuses to allegations about the provision of loans to actors said to abuse human rights, and even complaints about silent presence in a region where abuses were known to be occurring. D. Summing up 70. What constitutes complicity in both legal and non-legal terms is not uniform, nor is it static. Despite this messy reality, the evidence to date lends itself to several conclusions. First, knowingly providing a substantial contribution to human rights abuses could result in a company being held accountable in both legal and non-legal settings. Second, being seen to benefit from abuse may attract the attention of social actors even if it does not lead to legal liability. Third, and similarly, mere presence in contexts where abuses are taking place may attract attention from other social actors but is unlikely, by itself, to lead to legal liability. In short, both operating in contexts where abuses occur and the appearance of benefiting from such abuses should serve as red flags for companies to ensure that they exercise due diligence, adapted for the specific context of their operations. 60 See “Human Rights Principles for Companies” page 7, Amnesty International, document number ACT 70/001/1998, available at: http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/ info/ACT70/001/1998. 61 See for example “The Enron Corporation: Company Complicity in Human Rights Violations” (2002), available at: http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/enron/; and “Race to the Bottom, Corporate Complicity in Chinese Internet Censorship” (2006), available at: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2006/china0806/. 62 See A/HRC/8/5/Add.2. For the purposes of the study, “direct” involvement was considered to occur when the company caused the abuse through its own acts or omissions. “Indirect” involvement was considered to occur where firms were alleged to contribute to or benefit from the abuse of third parties, such as suppliers, individuals, arms of a State and other businesses.