A/HRC/11/13 page 14 violations of the law, then possibly through the courts. This transnational normative regime reaches not only Western multinationals, which have long experienced its effects, but also emerging economy companies operating abroad, and even large national firms.38 48. As a well established and institutionalized social norm, the corporate responsibility to respect exists independently of State duties and variations in national law. There may be situations in which companies have additional responsibilities. But the responsibility to respect is the baseline norm for all companies in all situations. 49. Company claims that they respect human rights are all well and good. But the Special Representative has asked whether companies have systems in place enabling them to demonstrate the claim with any degree of confidence. He has found that relatively few do. What is required is an ongoing process of human rights due diligence, whereby companies become aware of, prevent, and mitigate adverse human rights impacts. The four core elements of human rights due diligence were outlined in his 2008 report: having a human rights policy, assessing human rights impacts of company activities, integrating those values and findings into corporate cultures and management systems, and tracking as well as reporting performance.39 50. What is the appropriate scope of a company’s human rights due diligence process, the range of factors it needs to consider? Three are essential. The first is the country and local context in which the business activity takes place. This might include the country’s human rights commitments and practices, the public sector’s institutional capacity, ethnic tensions, migration patterns, the scarcity of critical resources like water, and so on. The second factor is what impacts the company’s own activities may have within that context, in its capacity as producer, service provider, employer and neighbour, and understanding that its presence inevitably will change many pre-existing conditions. The third factor is whether and how the company might contribute to abuse through the relationships connected to its activities, such as with business partners, entities in its value chain, other non-State actors, and State agents. 51. Companies do not control some of these factors, but that is no reason to ignore them. Businesses routinely employ due diligence to assess exposure to risks beyond their control and develop mitigation strategies for them, such as changes in government policy, shifts in consumer preferences, and even weather patterns. Controllable or not, human rights challenges arising from the business context, its impacts and its relationships can pose material risks to the company and its stakeholders, and generate outright abuses that may be linked to the company in perception or reality. Therefore, they merit a similar level of due diligence as any other risk. 52. Finally, companies need to know the substantive content of this due diligence process, or which rights it should encompass. The answer is simple - in principle, all internationally recognized human rights. The quest to determine a finite list of rights for companies to respect is 38 A good indicator is the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre’s website, which posts human rights allegations about business operations in more than 180 countries and gets 1.5 million hits per month. http://www.business-humanrights.org/. 39 A/HRC/8/5, paras. 56-64.