Human Rights Impact Assessment in the Context of Biofuels : Addressing the Human Right to Food and the Human Right to Water

The original mandate of the UN Special Representative on business and human rights said that he should 'develop materials and methodologies for undertaking human rights impact assessments.' Since then, tools for human rights impact assessment (HRIA) have developed by different actors. This article reviews two tools, which both are up for revision in 2010; one by the International Finance Corporation, International Business Leaders Forum and Global Compact; and one by the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels. The article finds that substantive human rights and human rights principles are well understood in the former, while the latter seems to have an inadequate understanding of crucial human rights principles, such as non-discrimination