Compliance, legal and sustainability teams
Navigating Human Rights Due Diligence
A Compliance-to-Engagement Implementation Guide
- 239 pages
- 13 chapters in 4 parts
- 14 figures, 19 tables
- Glossary and standards crosswalk
On 12 March 2026 a court in Paris awarded damages under a corporate due diligence law for the first time. The dismissals had happened at a Turkish subsidiary. The finding that produced liability was an omission in Paris: a risk mapping that left the group’s foreign subsidiaries out.
You have been handed a mandate and a deadline. The legal texts tell you what is required. They do not tell you how, and that is the gap this book closes.
It is current with the law after the 2026 Omnibus reforms, which raised the CSDDD scope to 5,000 employees and €1.5 billion in turnover, set a single 2029 application date, and capped penalties at 3 percent. Plenty of companies read that as a reprieve. The French courts, the buyers writing clauses into supply contracts and the lenders pricing the loan read it differently.
I wrote it for the person who has to build the programme, not for the lawyer who has to describe it.
What is inside
Map the three regimes
The CSDDD, the LkSG and the French Loi de Vigilance side by side, with scope thresholds, enforcement routes, and the differences that decide your exposure. What the Omnibus changed, and what survived untouched.
Build the method
Dual-track risk mapping and severity-based prioritization that scope a programme across the full chain of activities, against the standard French courts now apply: comprehensive, site-specific, severity-ranked, gross-risk.
Engage meaningfully
The five phases of stakeholder engagement, and how to move past tick-box consultation to two-way dialogue that survives an assessor asking what changed as a result.
Design grievance mechanisms
Each of the eight UNGP 31 effectiveness criteria worked through in turn, with architecture options, common pitfalls, and the Article 14 complaints procedure that the Omnibus left intact.
Master the impact assessment
Chapter 6 walks through the Danish Institute for Human Rights methodology, the reference standard for human rights impact assessment, in full procedural detail: planning, data collection, analysis, and follow-up. Chapter 8 adds the business case, with the empirical link between human rights performance, return on assets and access to capital.
Act with the toolkit
A phased implementation roadmap, eleven ready-to-use templates and checklists, a case study compendium including the failures, a glossary, and a standards crosswalk across the UNGPs, OECD Guidance, CSDDD, LkSG, French law, IFC and Equator.
Who it is for
- Compliance officers and in-house counsel
- Chief sustainability officers and ESG directors
- Procurement and supply chain leads
- Board members and external consultants
- Lenders and analysts who assess due diligence performance
Part of the same library
Every volume is built on Social Accord Architecture, written for a different side of the table.
- Social Accord Architecture
The cornerstone of the library
- Mediating Extractive Conflicts
Mediators and social performance practitioners
- The Human Shock Absorber
Community relations and social performance teams
- When the Mine Arrives
Communities, their leaders and their advisors
- Rebuild Grounds
Mediators running extractive disputes
- Social Risk for Boards
Directors and C-suite executives
- Standing in the Middle
The field companion of the library
The opening chapter
Read it before you buy it
Chapter one, in full, as a PDF. Give me an address and it arrives as a link you can open on any device. I send the chapter and nothing else unless you ask for it on the second box.
If the relationship around a project is under pressure, or heading there, let us talk.
A 30-minute call is enough for me to understand the situation and tell you honestly whether I can help. Active opposition, a social license problem, an FPIC process that needs an independent facilitator, a negotiation a community has to prepare for, or a conflict that is not public yet but will be. It makes no difference which side of the table you are on. No obligation, no generalist pitch.
Every first conversation is confidential.