UN FORUM SERIES – is dialogue working? We need more dialogue to find out

This post was contributed by Brian Ganson, Head of the Africa Centre for Dispute Settlement (ACDS) and Extraordinary Associate Professor at the University of Stellenbosch Business School. Well-functioning operational-level grievance mechanisms are likely to bring significant benefits to companies and communities. As noted in the commentary to the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), they “support the identification of adverse human rights impacts,” and make it possible for grievances “to be addressed and for adverse impacts to be remediated early and directly by the business enterprise, thereby preventing harms from compounding and grievances from escalating.” Conversely, “Poorly designed or implemented grievance mechanisms can risk compounding a sense of grievance amongst affected stakeholders by heightening their sense of disempowerment and disrespect by the process.”