Today the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General (SRSG) on business and human rights, John Ruggie, announced that his online consultation forum, www.srsgconsultation.org, will undergo a gradual overhaul next month, then remain open until December 2010.

The purpose of the forum is to gather views as the SRSG operationalizes the U.N. "Protect, Respect, Remedy" framework, as requested by the Human Rights Council. The forum was launched 1 December 2009, and has since attracted over 1800 unique visitors from 101 countries.

The forum has proven a valuable source of outreach and engagement for the SRSG. "The online forum has enhanced my ability to reach those interested in business and human rights around the world," said Ruggie. "I'm grateful to the students at the University of Western Ontario who built and are continuing to improve and maintain the forum, and for all those who have visited the site and contributed. I hope that the additional features and content will encourage even more participation as I move towards developing the final recommendations of my mandate."

During March, the forum will undergo a gradual overhaul: New technical features are being added to improve the user experience, such as the ability to share pages on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, the option to sign up for emails or RSS feeds for when pages are updated, and a search function.

The content will also change: Comments posted to date will remain on the site, but some pages will be revised, and new discussion questions will be added. The content will continue to evolve over the course of 2010, in response to the SRSG's work and new developments in the field.

All new developments and comments will be communicated via the forum's new Twitter account, @srsgforum.

About the forum

• Anybody can register to post and rate comments. Recognizing that there are legitimate reasons why some cannot comment publicly, private correspondence can be submitted to moderator[at]srsgconsultation.org.


• The SRSG would like to translate the forum into additional U.N. languages; individuals or parties interested in contributing high-quality pro-bono translation services should be referred to admin[at]srsgconsultation.org.


• Technical issues with the site should also be referred to admin[at]srsgconsultation.org.

About the SRSG

• John Ruggie, Berthold Beitz Professor of International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government and Affiliated Professor in International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, was appointed by then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan as Special Representative in 2005. The UN Human Rights Council renewed his mandate in 2008 for a three-year term.


• For more information about the SRSG's mandate, please visit his web portal, which is hosted by the independent Business & Human Rights Resource Centre: http://www.business-humanrights.org/SpecialRepPortal/Home.

UN Secretary-General's Special Representative on Business & Human Rights

UN Secretary-General's Special Representative on Business & Human Rights

In July 2005, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Harvard professor John Ruggie as his Special Representative on Business and Human Rights. In 2008, Ruggie proposed a policy framework for better managing business and human rights challenges, based on three pillars: the state duty to protect against human rights abuses by third parties, including business; the corporate responsibility to respect human rights; and the need for greater access by victims to effective remedy, judicial and non-judicial. The Human Rights Council was unanimous in welcoming the framework, and extended Ruggie's mandate by three years with the task of operationalizing it. Ruggie's aim is to develop guiding principles for each of its three pillars; his mandate concludes in 2011.

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