Securing human rights through risk-management methods: Breakthrough or misalignment?

This is a study of three authoritative instruments that promote a common idea: economic activities and development should be conducted with respect for human rights. The World Bank Framework, the International Financial Corporation Performance Standards and the UN Guiding Principles on business and human rights are examined to get clarity on how human rights risk management differs from more conventional management approaches. The focus here is on prevention of human rights impacts. Do the three instruments employ approaches adequate for handling human rights risks? To understand prevention, one needs to reflect on what makes human rights a particular type of impact and account for the regulatory context of protecting human rights transnationally. The analysis identifies four ‘offsets’ through which economic decision-makers can distort their human rights performance and place causal observers at a disadvantage. Prevention becomes an issue of how to relate to ‘residual impacts’ on human rights. This article finds that the ‘hierarchy or mitigation’ and even ‘human rights due diligence’ under illuminate the challenge. The proposal here is to add ‘reduction at source’ as a parameter of human rights risk management. The sources for this analysis are the three instruments, and the practice of implementing organizations, particularly IFC projects, CAO cases, impact assessments, and CSR reports. In conclusion, the potential for cross-fertilization among instruments is genuine. Increased clarity on prevention of human rights impacts should assist economic decision-makers in their risk management task and casual observers in assessing their performance.

The Use of Risk-Informed Inspection Approaches of Ukraine

Currently in Ukraine inspection activity is based on deterministic conservative principles, operation experience and expert appraisal of the inspector. Possibility and benefits of PSA are used with low efficiency. Results of the study conducted by IFC (International Financial Corporation) indicate the absence of a risk-informed approach in the practice of inspections in Ukraine. Also, according to the World Bank appraisal of the investment climate in Ukraine it should be concluded that until regulatory authorities begin implementation of a risk-informed approach in planning inspections in Ukraine random unscheduled events will dominate and won’t provide the goal of State Inspection. Information which obtained from the PSA helps to direct human and financial resources to the problems research that are the most important for safety, and to eliminate or reduce the requirements, which will reduce expenses of solution for significant issues. Inspection in the planning, preparation, implementation and evaluation of the results of which, in addition to deterministic estimates, operating experience and expertise evaluating risk are used is called the risk-informed inspection. The use of risk-informed approaches allows to: focus inspections on design and operational aspects, which have dominant influence on the safety of nuclear power plants (NPP); improve the schedule of inspections (recording of risk assessments in determining the scope, frequency, and type of inspection); and use an additional source of information on the systems and the components of power units, personnel availability. Applying a risk-informed approach to inspection, inspectors can focus primarily on systems that make the largest contribution to core damage frequency, failure of which leads to significant increase of CDF. Risk-informed approach allows to select the most important elements to test systems that will increase the efficiency and quality of inspections. Based on the above it can be concluded that the experience of inspector, his knowledge of the power unit design, the process, the mechanisms of failure of equipment and of accident running, the use of information on the importance of components and systems for the safety of nuclear power plants, obtained from PSA — an effective way to achieve the best results in improving safety.