A/HRC/14/27 F. Summing up 51. The Special Representative is tasked with providing views and concrete recommendations on ways to strengthen States’ fulfilment of their duty to protect against corporate-related human rights abuse. Part of the solution lies in preventative measures. If Governments safeguard their capacity to protect human rights, promote respect for rights when they do business with business, foster corporate cultures respectful of rights at home and abroad and work together to prevent and address the specific challenges posed by conflict-affected areas, they will take important steps in the right direction. 52. Greater policy coherence is also needed at the international level. States do not leave their human rights obligations behind when they enter multilateral institutions that deal with business-related issues. States should encourage those bodies to institute policies and practices that promote corporate respect for human rights. Additionally, capacity-building and awareness-raising through such institutions can play a vital role in helping all States to fulfil their duty to protect. 53. The elements of the State duty to protect as discussed above can also assist other actors, including international and regional human rights bodies, civil society and indeed business itself, draw attention to gaps in the current system and identify ways of closing them. IV. The corporate responsibility to respect 54. Resolution 8/7 tasks the Special Representative with elaborating further “the corporate responsibility to respect all human rights” and to provide concrete guidance on its operationalization to business and other stakeholders. 55. The term “responsibility” to respect, rather than “duty”, is meant to indicate that respecting rights is not an obligation that current international human rights law generally imposes directly on companies, although elements may be reflected in domestic laws. At the international level, the corporate responsibility to respect is a standard of expected conduct acknowledged in virtually every voluntary and soft-law instrument related to corporate responsibility,31 and now affirmed by the Council itself. 56. Beyond meeting legal requirements, companies increasingly include human rights elements in CSR initiatives. This practice has grown rapidly over the past decade, stimulating learning and helping to raise the visibility of human rights as a corporate concern. However, as the Special Representative has shown, CSR initiatives often deal with human rights in ad hoc ways that vary considerably across companies; typically they are decoupled from companies’ internal control and oversight systems; and many are weak on external accountability practices.32 Part of the problem has been that companies have lacked a strategic concept for addressing human rights systematically. The “corporate responsibility to respect” provides such a concept. A. Foundations 57. The corporate responsibility to respect human rights means avoiding the infringement of the rights of others and addressing adverse impacts that may occur. This 31 32 12 The ubiquity of this norm is documented in A/HRC/11/13, paras. 46–48. See A/HRC/4/35, paras. 66–81. GE.10-12629