A/HRC/8/5 page 4 companion report and addenda,3 responds to the mandate’s invitation for him to submit views and recommendations for the Council’s consideration. The mandate’s extensive, inclusive and transparent work programme has enabled the Special Representative to reflect on the challenges, hear and learn from diverse perspectives, and develop ideas about how best to proceed. 5. The business and human rights debate currently lacks an authoritative focal point. Claims and counter-claims proliferate, initiatives abound, and yet no effort reaches significant scale. Amid this confusing mix, laggards - States as well as companies - continue to fly below the radar. 6. Some stakeholders believe that the solution lies in a limited list of human rights for which companies would have responsibility, while extending to companies, where they have influence, essentially the same range of responsibilities as States. For reasons this report spells out, the Special Representative has not adopted this formula. Briefly, business can affect virtually all internationally recognized rights. Therefore, any limited list will almost certainly miss one or more rights that may turn out to be significant in a particular instance, thereby providing misleading guidance. At the same time, as economic actors, companies have unique responsibilities. If those responsibilities are entangled with State obligations, it makes it difficult if not impossible to tell who is responsible for what in practice. Hence, this report pursues the more promising path of addressing the specific responsibilities of companies in relation to all rights they may impact. 7. There is no single silver bullet solution to the institutional misalignments in the business and human rights domain. Instead, all social actors - States, businesses, and civil society - must learn to do many things differently. But those things must cohere and become cumulative, which makes it critically important to get the foundation right. 8. Every stakeholder group, despite their other differences, has expressed the urgent need for a common conceptual and policy framework, a foundation on which thinking and action can build. Drawing on the mandate’s work in its first two years, the Special Representative introduced the elements of a framework in multi-stakeholder consultations during the autumn of 2007.4 9. The framework rests on differentiated but complementary responsibilities. It comprises three core principles: the State duty to protect against human rights abuses by third parties, including business; the corporate responsibility to respect human rights; and the need for more effective access to remedies. Each principle is an essential component of the framework: the State duty to protect because it lies at the very core of the international human rights regime;5 3 A/HRC/8/5/Add.1 and 2 and A/HRC/8/16. 4 Each of these consultations was co-convened with a non-governmental organization (NGO). 5 The duty to protect is well established in international law and must not be confused with the concept of the “responsibility to protect” in the humanitarian intervention debate.