Remediation as an essential step in due diligence

Every day, people around the world face situations where their basic human rights are violated. According to the United Nations, “An adverse human rights impact occurs when an action removes or reduces the ability of an individual to enjoy his or her human rights”. When these impacts occur, they should be subject to remediation. Remedy describes the process and the outcome that seek to restore human dignity. The focus on process means that remedy should be stakeholder-driven; the focus on outcomes seeks to counteract, or make good, the negative impact.

As described by the United Nations Environment Programme, remedy can take many forms, including:

• Apology (including acknowledgement of harm done)
• Restitution (restoring someone or something to its former condition prior to the harm or impact)
• Rehabilitation (facilitating someone’s recovery from harm, which may include medical or psychological care as well as legal and social services
• Compensation (including both monetary and non-monetary forms)
• Sanction (including contractual sanctions and penalties)
• Guarantees of non-repetition (including specific measures, mitigants, and activities to ensure that human rights abuses do not re-occur).

While due diligence aims to prevent adverse impact, even responsible companies can sometimes cause or contribute to harm. In those moments, remedy becomes essential. The OECD standards on responsible business expect businesses and investors to establish or co-operate in effective grievance mechanisms that are accessible to impacted stakeholders. In the 6 step due diligence process recommended in the OECD Guidance on Responsible Business Conduct, this sixth step has a special place. As illustrated in Figure 1, ‘Provide for or cooperate in remediation’ is placed outside the cartwheel of continuous improvement. This placement reflects the fact that only when the due diligence process has gone wrong, step 6 comes into play.

DILICHANCE CONSORTIUM MEMBER LEVIN SOURCES GIVES 6 REASONS WHY COMPANIES SHOULD CARE ABOUT REMEDIATION:

1. It’s one of the 3 core pillars of the United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights, known as UNGP, which sets out clear guidance to governments, business and other stakeholders on how to support victims of human rights harms to access remedy.
2. As the UNGPs are being domesticated into national and international laws, then it is important for miners to demonstrate conformance with them for compliance purposes but also to meet business partner expectations, especially for European downstream entities and investors.
3. Past harms leave people aggrieved, which affects trust and the willingness to participate in or support company or statutory initiatives. Low trust elevates the likelihood of resistance and conflict and prevents the types of cooperations that can maximize positive impacts for business and society. It is also at the root of permitting delays and refusals in a number of jurisdictions (as evidenced by our work in Chile, for example) and a lack of investment (as shared by investors at Resourcing Tomorrow in December 2025), and as such is a key barrier to scaling minerals production but also to achieving project viability and financing.
4. Equity is a basis for driving sustainable development and without access to remedy, harms are inequitably distributed leading to greater socio-economic inequality, deepening poverty and leaving the promise of minerals-driven prosperity unfulfilled.
5. Company directors have a fiduciary duty to conduct business ethically. Creating harm and not repairing it is unethical.
6. Perhaps most importantly, remedy is a pathway for healing for victims and their families. This has inter-generational ramifications because trauma is inherited both epigenetically and behaviourally. As the descendant of Jewish refugees and married into an Irish family, I see this inherited trauma in action in my own life.

Understanding what remedy means in theory is only the first step. How this responsibility plays out in reality is something completely different. Do companies genuinely take action when harm occurs? Do their systems work for those most affected? To answer these questions, in 2025, the DiliCHANCE consortium assessed the due diligence policies and reported actions of 21 companies that operate in key industrial sectors, i.e. mining, trading, refining and recycling, mobility, electronics and renewable energy. The study, which was based on the publicly available reports of the companies, showed that the scores on remedy were worse than for other due diligence indicators. Almost no information was found on whether and how companies consult impacted people when determining appropriate remedies.

While many companies acknowledge the importance of having grievance mechanisms in place, there appear to be a lack of detailed public information on how these are monitored, whether vulnerable groups can meaningfully access them, and how companies ensure that the mechanisms function as intended. Similarly, although remediation and corrective action are mentioned in publicly available reports, there is little detail available about how affected individuals are actually restored, what processes are in place to facilitate remediation, and whether these processes are delivering fair and timely outcomes.