Updated IBA Guidance on Business and Human Rights for Bar Associations

Take advantage of any opportunities to raise awareness of the existence and relevance of BHR instruments and principles among all members and consider extending this to the public. Awareness raising can be done through, for example, holding special BHR sessions at conferences, and featuring BHR issues on your organisation’s website and publications.

Your organisation can promote, participate in and / or establish educational programmes – including mentoring programmes – for law students and practitioners on the relevance of BHR to legal practice. The Updated Bar Guidance lists a range of ideas for subjects that these programs could deal with.

Advising clients on compliance with applicable law – including laws that incorporate or reflect the UNGPs or other human rights standards – is a fundamental legal competence, and advising clients on relevant soft law implications of the UNGPs is wise counselling. Your organisation is strongly encouraged to draw to your members’ attention the ethical considerations which lawyers should consider related to business and human rights when advising clients. If your organisation publishes a professional code of conduct for lawyers, consider amending this code so that it encourages or requires lawyers to take account of any risks of human rights impacts – and how to address potential dilemmas – when advising business clients.

Your association can provide a range of assistance to help strengthen lawyers’ institutional and human capacity to adopt effective BHR practices. This includes ensuring that lawyers have access to international and domestic business and human rights instruments, preferably in their own language.

Your organisation can help bring the legal profession together and enable member lawyers and law firms who have had success in embedding business and human rights principles in their advice to clients to share their experiences. Bar associations may also wish to share their own experiences, ideas, best practices and challenges faced, with other bar associations, to help strengthen their own approaches to human rights. As part of this, your organisation may wish to consider publishing the steps that you are taking to address business and human rights.

Your organisation may wish to publicly acknowledge successful business and human rights measures or programmes adopted by legal practitioners in your jurisdiction (e.g. through issuing awards and promoting successful BHR programs in your organisation’s publications).

Business and human rights principles are being increasingly integrated into domestic policy or legislation, or into industry standards. Your organisation may wish to ensure that the views of the legal profession are represented in consultation processes relating to the development of these instruments.