Chile

Pillar II. The Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human Rights

Strand 2: Promotion of corporate due diligence in the field of human rights [pages 54-56]

The need for the State to generate an understanding among business enterprises about due diligence in human rights was often mentioned in the citizens’ dialogues, as well as the creation of spaces allowing to clarify how to develop these processes at a local level.

2.1. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through the General Directorate of International Economic Relations, will: o Promote human rights in the management of public funds to promote exports carried out by ProChile, through the progressive incorporation of analysis mechanisms helping to ensure that business enterprises having access to the tools offered by this entity respect human rights. Likewise, it will establish, if relevant, requirements about sustainability and respect for human rights, as criteria to choose the business enterprises participating in programmes to promote exports and corporate activities, including SMEs and micro SMEs. o Disclose to business enterprises who are members of ProChile the United Nations Guiding Principles, thus helping, in this was and as far as possible, to incorporate them in their activities. It will do this through information available in the website, talks or sets of tools to strengthen their capabilities, and/or through the publication of handbooks containing the Guiding Principles or another suitable instrument, with special focus on information and training provided to SMEs.

2.2. The Ministry of Economy, Development and Tourism will:

o Hold a working group at least once each semester with the Division of Social Economy and Associativity and the Division of Smaller Business Enterprises with the purpose of identifying the impact of human rights in the management of businesses such as cooperatives and SMEs, and of incorporating the vision of human rights and business enterprises within this type of economic associations. Based on the activities of thee working groups, sector guides will be developed to evaluate compliance with human rights issues, with special emphasis on the management of supply chains.

o Create working groups in conjunction with the Under-Secretariat of Fisheries and Aquaculture and the Under-Secretariat of Tourism, which will have the duty to analyse and create mechanisms allowing to monitor these sectors regarding their respect for human rights. It will encourage and work with SEP for the adoption of an audit system in the field of human rights.

o Support the Ministry of Energy in the development of a Guide about the impact of projects on local communities, seeing to the integration of business and human rights standards into the development of projects within communities and, particularly, containing best practices about due diligence in human rights-related issues.

Agree, with business enterprises represented in the Social Responsibility Council for Sustainable Development, upon the development of memorandums of understanding, guides, handbooks and guidelines containing best practices, so that they can become an integral part of business and human rights standards in the following subject matters: labour practices, impact on communities, corporate practices and supply chain management.

Propose guidelines for business enterprises to have remedial mechanisms available. o Coordinate technical meetings with SEP, CORFO, SERNAC and SERCOTEC to agree on the incorporation of targets and indicators of compliance with human rights standards in these services. o Look to generate strategic alliances with banking institutions to facilitate access to financial services to cooperatives -which projects integrate an actual and potential analysis of the contribution and impact that the business may have on human rights. o Subscribe in 2017 an agreement with a technical specialised body to develop a system to diagnose and measure the impact of small and medium size enterprises on human rights, through a digital tool of public access.