UN Directives

A fundamental contribution to the international debate on this subject comes from the work carried out by the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary General on Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises. Nominated in 2005 by the General Secretary of the United Nations on the request of the Human Rights Council, this body has been entrusted with the task of defining the responsibilities of companies as far as the respect of human rights is concerned. In June 2008, at the end of its first mandate, the Special Representative presented the Human Rights Council with a report, “Protect, Respect and Remedy: a Framework for Business and Human Rights‘, that introduced the “Protect, respect and remedy‘ paradigm.
The authoritative report of the Special Representative identified three fundamental principles:

• States are called upon to protect individuals from the violation of human rights by third parties (protect);
• companies are responsible for respecting human rights (respect);
• victims must be ensured access to effective guarantee mechanisms (remedy).

While this definition of the responsibility of companies may seem restrictive, it does in fact contain a series of implications that are important in terms of changing a company’s culture and approach to business. The paradigm explicitly establishes that it is no longer sufficient for companies to limit themselves to not breaking national laws or directly carrying out actions that go against the interests of people or the environment. For a company, guaranteeing the respect of human rights means operating with due diligence, a requisite that translates into devising various organisational tools that are interconnected in a consistent and synergic way. In particular, the four main elements of due diligence are: adopting a human rights policy; evaluating the impact on human rights in specific operational situations; integrating the values and the results of the evaluations into the company culture and its management systems; monitoring and reporting on performances.

Apart from undertaking to prevent the risk of directly committing violations of human rights, companies are also called on to actively ensure that they operate in such a way as to minimise the risk of being accomplices in violations committed by individuals or other subjects who come under their sphere of influence, or by intermediaries who they can exercise an important influence over. As for complicity, it derives from a combination of two elements: the reasonable possibility that the company has knowledge of the violations committed by third parties, and the existence of eventual advantages for the company deriving from the violations committed.
By means of due diligence, Eni undertakes every day to avoid complicity in violations of human rights committed by subjects who come under its sphere of influence such as, for example, its suppliers.

• The task of ensuring that all operational sectors, relating to long-term strategies and daily practices, conform to the main contents of the Guidelines is a process that needs to be continuously developed and requires the involvement of everyone.
• Monitoring and reporting are guaranteed by the Sustainability system, the results of which are summarised in the Sustainability Report.