A/HRC/14/27 private and public, national and international — that will make them more effective in dealing with business and human rights. 7. As has been true throughout the mandate, the operationalization phase combines research, consultations and practical experimentation.4 For example, to benefit from diverse regional perspectives, since 2008 the Special Representative has held multi-stakeholder consultations in New Delhi, Buenos Aires and Moscow, including participants from nearby countries.5 Sweden, during its European Union Presidency, convened a European Unionwide consultation. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) organized a global consultation in Geneva, involving more than 300 participants. 8. To facilitate additional stakeholder input and engagement on the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, the Special Representative launched an online consultation in December 2009,6 which attracted visitors from 101 countries in its first three months. 9. To better understand the role that corporate law and securities regulation do and could play in ensuring corporate respect for human rights, the Special Representative worked with 19 leading law firms from around the world in mapping more than 40 jurisdictions, followed by an international expert workshop to extract patterns and lessons from the information gained. 10. To provide the mandate with information on obstacles to accessing judicial remedy, Amnesty International and two Norwegian research institutes, the Peacekeeping Centre and Fafo, organized a meeting of legal practitioners from diverse regions and legal traditions. 11. Five companies are testing the framework’s principles for company-based grievance mechanisms: Carbones del Cerrejon with neighbouring indigenous communities in Colombia; Esquel Group, a garment manufacturer based in Hong Kong, China, in its Vietnamese facility; Sakhalin Energy Investment Corporation in Russia; the retailer Tesco in its South African fruit supply chain; and Hewlett-Packard with two of its suppliers in China. 12. Because the most egregious business-related human rights abuses occur in conflictaffected areas, the Special Representative has convened a small, informal but representative group of States to brainstorm innovative ideas about how host, home and neighbouring States might help prevent or mitigate such abuses. Participating countries include Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Ghana, Guatemala, Nigeria, Norway, Sierra Leone, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. 13. The Special Representative’s efforts to promote the framework are equally wideranging and results-oriented. He is liaising with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as it updates its Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises; the International Finance Corporation as it revises its Performance Standards; the Human Rights Working Group of the Global Compact in identifying best practices; and the European Commission, which is exploring ways of ensuring responsible behaviour overseas by European firms. He provided input for the human rights section of the social responsibility standard of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO 26000); successfully urged the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law to consider greater transparency in its investor-State arbitration proceedings when public interest considerations, including human rights, are involved; and he or a representative presented 4 5 6 4 All research and consultations reports are available from http://www.business-humanrights.org/ SpecialRepPortal/Home. Earlier regional consultations were held in Bangkok, Bogota and Johannesburg. See http://www.srsgconsultation.org. GE.10-12629