Principle 2: Commit to prevent GBVH

Businesses¹ commit to prevent GBVH and ensure their business partners do the same

They conduct gender-responsive human rights due diligence, promote collaboration and share responsibility, risks and costs fairly.

Safeguarding human rights and preventing GBVH across the supply chain requires cooperation among all relevant actors. Businesses must collaborate, share resources and, where necessary, jointly fund interventions and support. Each business has an individual and non-transferable responsibility to respect human rights. They should work with partners to conduct GRHRDD, mitigate GBVH and fulfil their responsibilities. When purchasing, businesses must promote collaboration and support partners — including service providers (e.g. cleaners, recruiters) and product suppliers — through responsible purchasing practices (see Principle 5).

2.1 Share responsibility for preventing, mitigating and remediating GBVH

• Ensure business activities, including purchasing or providing goods and services, and employing workers (including recruitment), do not cause GBVH. Take all reasonable steps to prevent contributing to GBVH in operations and supply chains and remediate if this occurs (see Principle 9).   
• If linked to GBVH,² use leverage to ensure partners act and support them in fulfilling responsibilities. Support may include co-funding, guidance, knowledge sharing, upskilling and/or training.
• Ensure partners have effective HRDD systems to prevent and mitigate GBVH, rather than reacting to GBVH. Avoid a top-down approach and assess jointly with partners what support they need to conduct their own due diligence. 

2.2 Collaborate and coordinate with other businesses

• Map key stakeholders along the supply chain, within and across sectors.
• Combine leverage and resources with peers to address systemic challenges, e.g. setting consistent expectations with labour suppliers to shift industry practice.
• Coordinate support to partners (e.g. suppliers) and cascade this across the supply chain to align responses to addressing GBVH systematically

2.3 Collaborate with workers, their representatives/trade unions and other specialists. 

• Map key stakeholders from trade unions and NGOs, locally, nationally and internationally, especially those that are led by and for at risk groups (e.g. ethnic minority women, LGBTQI+ workers, migrant women). They can provide localised knowledge and can engage with workers safely and effectively.

2.4 Formalise collaboration through contracts.

• Embed GBVH-related policies and mutual expectations into commercial contracts with business partners such as suppliers, service providers and labour intermediaries.
• Develop commercial contracts that enable cooperation on risk identification, prevention, and remediation, and require partners to cascade equivalent expectations to their own business partners through contractual clauses where appropriate.
• In addition to commercial contracts, examples include:  
  • Global framework agreements (GFA): agreements between multi-national enterprises and global unions referencing international standards and ongoing collaboration to address labour rights issues, including GBVH.³
  • Enforceable binding agreements (EBA): interlocking agreements between business partners, unions, and NGOs, setting binding roles and responsibilities of supply chain actors for addressing GBVH.⁴

2.5 Responsibly disengage, in consultation with workers, as a last resort.

• Exhaust all efforts to use leverage with partners and apply other principles before disengaging. Business stability and job continuity provides the basis for improvement and remediation of GBVH.⁵
• If disengagement is unavoidable, consult workers and their representatives/trade unions, and other stakeholders to assess the human rights impact, and plan to minimise harm.