What are salient human rights issues?

A company’s salient human rights issues are those human rights that stand out because they are at risk of the most severe negative impact in connection with the company’s operations or value chain.

How does ‘salience’ relate to traditional business risk analyses?

...impacts that rise to this level of severity converge strongly with risk to the business, as seen in the many instances where they lead to reputation-damaging campaigns, disruption and delays to operations, increased costs of managing conflict, litigation and other costs or loss in value to the business.

Can a company decide for itself what its most severe risks to people are?

To identify a company’s salient human rights issues, a company needs to map out the various impacts it could be involved with across its operations and value chain. This assessment should be informed by an understanding of the perspectives of those who could be impacted...

Is this just the latest idea or model that will be replaced tomorrow by another? 

The Guiding Principles are clear that any prioritization of human rights risks should be based on the severity of the potential impacts based on the three criteria I mentioned. So this attention to salient human rights issues isn’t a passing fashion. It’s an expectation that is here to stay.

Are there benefits other than “doing the right thing” for companies that understand and address risks to human rights associated with their business?

Absolutely...The costs or lost value to companies that don’t understand and manage salient human rights issues are increasingly obvious...On the other hand, where companies drive respect for human rights across their business, they help to raise standards of behavior more widely