A/HRC/4/74 page 10 V. OUTLOOK 37. Impact assessments for private sector projects are currently discussed almost exclusively for projects with large physical footprints, but in recent years industries such as technology and finance have come under fire for not paying adequate attention to the human rights issues of their operations. There do not appear to be any HRIAs for these industries in the public domain yet, but hopefully this will change in the near future as there is no question that any industry can have significant impacts on human rights, positive and negative. One of the case studies in the Rights and Democracy HRIA pilot described in the previous section is in the technology sector. 38. Similarly, the companies known to undertake HRIAs or comparable exercises are large multinationals. As HRIAs for business become more common, both the costs and the benefits of the exercise should become clearer, hopefully leading other business enterprises to experiment with HRIAs. It should also become clear which approach would be most appropriate for which sort of company, depending on the scale and nature of the business. A medium-sized enterprise should not be expected to allocate the same amount of funding and staff time to an HRIA as a multinational, but smaller companies could apply the same methodology with one expert rather than a team, and place more emphasis on secondary research - although consultation with affected communities is still critical. 39. HRIAs are not currently required by any law, lending institution, or standard - most certainly since they have yet to be clearly defined. But it should be reasonable to expect that HRIAs will be undertaken for significant prospective investments in conflict zones or areas where human rights abuses have been prevalent. When in doubt, a diagnostic tool or preliminary HRIA (comprising secondary research and a few expert opinions rather than extensive consultation) can determine whether a full HRIA is necessary. 40. Given the proliferation of public information on human rights, including the numerous specialized resources for business (e.g. the Maplecroft maps, the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, the aforementioned Danish Institute and HOM tools, and business-specific research by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch), there is no excuse for any company, lender or investor to claim to be unaware that their investments could impact human rights.16 16 See Maplecroft maps, http://maps.maplecroft.com; the Business and Human Rights Resource Center, http://business-humanrights.org; Danish Institute op. cit.; Amnesty International and IBLF, Business & Human Rights: A Geography of Corporate Risk, 2002, http://iblf.org/resources/general.jsp?id=69.