Building on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights The process of field research and consultation leading up to the SWIA publication and its subsequent dissemination are designed to support the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles within Myanmar as follows: • Pillar I: The State Duty to Protect against human rights abuses by third parties, including businesses, means the State should adopt effective policies, legislation, regulations and adjudication to prevent, investigate, punish and redress human rights abuses as a result of domestic business operations. As the Government of Myanmar and Parliamentarians develop sectoral policies and laws, they will be making choices about the future direction of the country, balancing potential negative and positive impacts of their decisions. The ICT SWIA provides an analysis that helps inform law, policy and administrative procedures in ways that prevent and mitigate harms and enhance positive outcomes. Foreign governments supporting economic development in Myanmar can also use the SWIA to better understand the human rights impacts of the ICT sector in Myanmar, and align their foreign investment support and policies. • Pillar II: The Corporate Responsibility to Respect human rights, means that companies should avoid infringing the human rights of others and address negative impacts with which they are involved. The ICT SWIA provides a better understanding of potential human rights impacts at the operational level and a preview of factors contributing to a sectoral ‘social license to operate’. This should assist ICT companies into incorporating attention to human rights issues into their own human rights due diligence around their investments and operations (See Table 3 below). • Pillar III: Access to Effective Remedy for victims of business-related human rights abuses should be provided through both judicial and non-judicial means. While the ICT SWIA is not a comprehensive review of rule of law and access to justice in Myanmar, it provides a brief overview of the currently limited avenues for access to effective remedy in Myanmar. It therefore encourages businesses to put in place grievance mechanisms that enable users, communities and workers to raise their concerns regarding ICT sector impacts, in order that they can be addressed as early and effectively as possible. As such, the SWIA supports workers, users and local communities in understanding and protecting their rights. The Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human Rights Companies should not assume that complying with Myanmar national law will be sufficient to meet the responsibility to respect human rights. The evolving domestic legal framework still lags behind international standards, and compliance with national law is unlikely to be sufficient to meet international standards in many areas. The UN Guiding Principles and the OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises require companies to assess and manage their potential adverse impacts as a core part of meeting the corporate responsibility to respect human rights. Being as transparent as possible, including communicating the dilemmas they face and the measures they are CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 49 1