This paper forms part of the research background to a project of the Corporate Social Responsibility
Initiative at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. The project is focused on mechanisms
for resolving grievances in the business and human rights arena. It aims to examine the strengths and
weaknesses of existing grievance mechanisms in order to highlight lessons to be drawn from their
experience, consider how they might be improved and explore what model mechanisms might look like
for the field of business and human rights.
This paper sets out in summary form a range of existing grievance mechanisms from a variety of different
contexts, whether industry or multiindustry, national, regional or international, private or public, based on
law or voluntary standards. The aim here is to describe the mechanisms as factually as possible in order
to provide a platform for further analysis as to how effective these mechanisms are and how well they are
implemented in practice, but such judgments are not the purpose of this paper.
The common denominator among the mechanisms is that they a) address the impacts of corporations,
b) explicitly or implicitly reference human rights, and c) are nonjudicial. Their purpose is to find
resolutions to grievances outside the judicial process for various reasons such as cost saving, time
saving, a desire to avoid confrontation, and a need to protect the integrity of an institution or initiative.
Some of the mechanisms can proceed in parallel with judicial processes; others are intended to avoid the
need for judicial processes, and some take effect once a case is filed with a judicial body in order to
encourage parties to come to a resolution prior to any judgment.