EVALUATING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF FOUR ASIA-PACIFIC NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS INSTITUTIONS BY REFERENCE TO RUGGIE’S THIRD PILLAR
Samantha Taylor
Abstract The Protect, Respect and Remedy Framework (‘Framework’) and its associated guiding principles seeks to provide guidance for the human rights responsibilities of business. The Framework rests on three pillars, first - the states duty to protect human rights, second - the responsibility of business to respect human rights and third- the states responsibility to provide remedies for human rights abuses by business. This Article focuses on the third pillar – the states duty to provide a remedy. The guiding principles operationalizing the Framework suggest state-based non-judicial grievance mechanisms should form the foundation of a wider system of remedies and further suggest criteria for determining the effectiveness of such mechanisms. This Article considers four Asia-Pacific national human rights institutions as examples of state-based non-judicial grievance mechanisms and evaluates their effectiveness to remedy human rights abuses by business, by reference to the effectiveness criteria set out in the guiding principles.