limited, including through collaboration if appropriate. Principles 17 to 20 of the UN Guiding Principles describe the human rights due diligence responsibilities of corporate actors. Principle 17 states that “the process should include assessing actual and potential human rights impacts, integrating and acting upon the findings, tracking responses, and communicating how impacts are addressed”, and the process “should cover adverse human rights impacts that the business enterprise may cause or contribute to through its own activities, or which may be directly linked to its operations, products or services by its business relationships”. Due diligence practices “[w]ill vary in complexity with the size of the business enterprise, the risk of severe human rights impacts, and the nature and context of its operations” and they should be “ongoing, recognizing that the human rights risks may change over time as the business enterprise’s operations and operating context evolve”.60 Principle 18 states that “business enterprises should identify and assess any actual or potential adverse human rights impacts with which they may be involved” including by drawing on “internal and/or independent external human rights expertise” and conducting “meaningful consultation with potentially affected groups and other relevant stakeholders, as appropriate to the size of the business enterprise and the nature and context of the operation”.61 Transparency is a key component of human rights due diligence. As the UN Guiding Principles make clear, companies “need to know and show that they respect human rights”62 and “showing involves communication, providing a measure of transparency and accountability to individuals or groups who may be impacted and to other relevant stakeholders.”63 The OECD Guidelines also state that companies should carry out “risk-based due diligence” and state that due diligence processes should seek to “identify, prevent and mitigate actual and potential adverse impacts”.64 The OECD Guidelines also state that “[e]nterprises should carry out human rights due diligence as appropriate to their size, the nature and context of operations and the severity of the risks of adverse human rights impacts.”65 Corporations are subject to higher than usual standards of due diligence in conflict-affected-settings. UN Guiding Principle 23 notes that having operations in conflict-affected areas may increase the risk of being complicit in gross human rights abuses committed by other actors (for example, security forces), which necessitates extra care.66 The Guiding Principles imply that such measures should take the form of “enhanced” or “heightened” human rights due diligence.67 A report published in 2020 by the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights provides additional guidance for businesses operating in conflictprone regions, and states that "heightened human rights due diligence" should incorporate conflict sensitivity and atrocity-prevention approaches in order to account for the two-way interaction between the business activities and the context, as well as broader stakeholder engagement that includes engagement with armed non-state actors so as to mitigate the information gaps, polarization, and mistrust which usually exists among groups and communities who are in conflict.68 Notably, the Working Group establishes in this report that, when operating in conflict-affected and post-conflict areas, the business responsibility to remediate human rights harm should also include engagement with transitional justice processes, such as: prosecution initiatives, truth-seeking processes, reparations programmes, and institutional reform.69 The report also points to the responsibilities of technology companies, specifically, stating: "There is no exceptionalism [for heightened human rights due diligence in conflict affected settings for the technology] sector” and “the sector should adopt a genuine human rights approach, in which all rights are recognized as equal, rather than the misguided understanding of human rights whereby the right to free speech, or the 60 UN Guiding Principles, Principle 17. 61 UN Guiding Principles, Principle 18. 62 UN Guiding Principles, Commentary to Principle 15. 63 UN Guiding Principles, Commentary to Principle 21. 64 OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, Chapter II ‘General Principles’. 2A, 10. 65 OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, Chapter IV ‘Human Rights’, 5. 66 UN Guiding Principles, Principle 23. Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises, John Ruggie, ‘Business and human rights in conflict-affected regions: challenges and options towards State responses’, 27 May 2011, A/ HRC/17/32, para. 16 (d). 67 Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises, “Business, human rights and conflict-affected regions: towards heightened action”, 21 July 2020, A/75/212. 68 Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises, “Business, human rights and conflict-affected regions: towards heightened action”, 21 July 2020, A/75/212. 69 THE SOCIAL ATROCITY META AND THE RIGHT TO REMEDY FOR THE ROHINGYA Amnesty International 19

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