Governments have a duty to protect human rights. Companies have a responsibility to respect human rights when doing business. Our business principles require us to respect the human rights of our employees and to support fundamental human rights in line with the legitimate role of business. Our employees are expected to understand human rights issues that may exist where they work and to follow Shell’s commitments, standards and policies in this area.

Environmental, social and health impact assessments are conducted with external experts before we start major new projects. We also consider specific human rights aspects.

We are active in efforts to improve understanding of the relationship between business and human rights. We took part in consultations with Professor John Ruggie, the UN special representative on business and human rights, as he developed the Protect, Respect and Remedy framework. We worked with Professor Ruggie’s team in piloting community grievance mechanisms on Sakhalin Island.

The Voluntary Principles for Security and Human Rights (VPSHR) guide the human rights aspects of security arrangements for our operations. We provide training for relevant employees and contractors globally on how they should apply these principles. All new security contracts contain a clause to comply with the VPSHR. We aim to have this clause included in all security contracts by 2012.

http://sustainabilityreport.shell.com/2010/operatingresponsibly/livingbyourprinciples/humanrights.html