Allan Miller: Respecting human rights is the business of all our companies

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, will be making her first visit to Scotland, joined by Mary Robinson, the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights who has recently established the Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice.

The theme of the conference - business and human rights - has emerged as a critical challenge to the international legal framework. In a significant development the UN Human Rights Council affirmed earlier this year that, while recognising that states remain the primary duty bearer in the UN human rights system, business does have a responsibility to respect human rights.

This has followed a decade or more of debate and interaction among governments, business, legal, academic and NGO communities, all of whom will be represented at the conference. A common framework of shared responsibilities, based on international human rights law, is now being developed and this conference will examine the role which national human rights commissions can play.

The shift in economic and political power from states to business has led to a shift in public expectations that business must now accept its share of responsibility towards human rights, that it must become part of the solution and not be part of the problem.

Companies are increasingly expected to behave to responsible standards, at the very least to cause no harm to the people working for them, living nearby, or affected by their products or services. The influence of multinationals in particular has led to demands for businesses to accept their proper share of responsibility for respecting human rights in their territories, in the investments they make, with their environmental record, and in how they deal with possible human rights violations. The past decade has seen many initiatives to make it the norm that rights are respected in the day to day behaviour of firms towards employees, individuals and communities. This now needs to be scaled up in a more coherent and consistent way.

In Scotland, some of the issues around business and human rights are beginning to be acted upon, by government, the third sector, by companies themselves, and by campaigning organisations.For example, the recent Climate Change Bill from the Scottish Government, and its support for investment in the renewable energy sector and low carbon development, has the potential to be a model in addressing climate change.

Exploring ways and means of improving the sharing of this expertise with the developing world, which has contributed the least but suffers the most from climate change, now needs to be further taken up by government and business.

Scottish voluntary groups are also already active in protesting against procurement decisions which could affect human rights standards, for example in the delivery of care services. Individual companies in Scotland and the UK are becoming more mindful of the need to protect human rights in their supply chains and operating systems overseas.

Conference delegates, representing human rights commissions from New Zealand, Morocco, Indonesia, India, Mexico, and South Africa, amongst many others, will be discussing the role we as human rights institutions have in addressing corporate responsibility, the duties of states in protecting people against corporate human rights abuses, and state duties to ensure effective remedies when abuses take place.

With others, our Commission is committed to supporting companies to make meaningful commitments to respect human rights, help them monitor their own progress, and support them to deal with emerging issues as they arise.

This conference will not be a talking shop. When it closes on Sunday, delegates will be invited to adopt the "Edinburgh Declaration" which will start the development of national, regional and international programmes of action by all of our sister human rights commissions around the world.

• Professor Alan Miller is Chair, Scottish Human Rights Commission. www.scottishhumanrights.com