Addressing Blind Spots: Why Human Rights Defenders Need to Be Part of Human Rights Due Diligence Processes

Addressing Blind Spots: Why Human Rights Defenders Need to Be Part of Human Rights Due Diligence Processes

By Dorothee Baumann-Pauly and Sarah Creedon, June 2026

A new report from the Business and Human Rights Centre documents nearly 800 attacks against human rights defenders in 2025 alone, painting a stark picture: the people with the most granular, real-time knowledge of what is happening on the ground in corporate supply chains are experiencing intimidation, surveillance, physical violence and judicial harassment at record levels.

The report also makes clear what is being lost: defenders are the earliest and most reliable source of information about risks in corporate supply chains, yet companies have no safe or systematic way to access what they know.

With The Bridge - the Geneva Center for Business and Human Rights’ (GCBHR) new service connecting companies with local human rights defenders - is working to change that, creating a safe channel that connects companies with local human rights defenders, so that critical knowledge reaches the people who need it, without putting defenders at risk.

During a recent pilot of The Bridge, we identified material business risks that could have escalated significantly had they not been brought to the company’s attention. On paper, the situation looked clean. The business partner had submitted documentation that was fully compliant with standard HRDD procedures. Water testing had apparently been conducted. A community consultation had taken place. The paperwork ticked every box.

Beneath the surface, the reality was starkly different. Local communities have no trust in the independence or quality of the water and radiation tests - and their own experience told a different story. Though the company and government publicly stated a Community Development Agreement was in place, the consultations were not transparent or inclusive. They were conducted in a top-down manner including only senior members of the government and tribal chief. No systematic effort had been made to include women or other community members. The environmental impact assessment has not been provided to the community and local hospitals are not equipped to manage radiation-related illnesses. The tensions were brewing and close to escalation. Standard due diligence processes had missed them entirely. Local human rights defenders had not.

This is the blind spot at the heart of corporate Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD): companies are increasingly required by law to identify and address human rights risks in their operations and supply chains, yet the most valuable sources of local knowledge - human rights defenders - are not systematically part of these processes. The reasons are structural. Defenders lack safe channels to share concerns without fear of reprisals, while companies lack secure mechanisms to consult them without exposing themselves to legal or reputational risk. The result is a trust deficit that keeps two parties with complementary interests and urgent reasons to collaborate on opposite sides of a divide.

Unique Risk Assessment with Insights from Human Rights Defenders

Human rights defenders possess granular, real-time expertise that no desk-based audit can replicate. They know the conflict drivers, the legacy grievances, the simmering tensions that do not appear in supplier questionnaires. They know which consultations were genuine and which were performative. They know who was left out of the room and why that matters. Without this knowledge, companies are operating blind in precisely the environments where the stakes are highest. This structural knowledge gap has real consequences. Without local insights, companies face operational disruptions, reputational damage, and growing legal liability. As mandatory HRDD regulations mature - the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive being the most significant - the obligation to conduct meaningful stakeholder engagement is no longer optional. Engagement that excludes the people with the most relevant knowledge is not meaningful. It is, at best, incomplete. At worst, it is the kind of box-ticking that leaves companies exposed to exactly the risks they are required to manage.

Bringing Human Rights Defenders and Companies Together

The Bridge is designed to close this gap. As a neutral academic institution, the GCBHR acts as a trusted intermediary: working with civil society networks to identify local human rights defenders with relevant expertise, collecting their insights through a secure and anonymized process, and distilling the findings into actionable briefing papers for companies. Defenders can share what they know without exposure. Companies can listen without risk.

Our pilots confirm what the logic suggests: routine due diligence consistently misses the early warning signs that local defenders are quickest to identify. The issues they raise are not abstract, they are material business risks, with direct implications for operational continuity, legal liability, and reputation. In the case described above, the company was given the information to act before tensions escalated. Without The Bridge, they would never have known what they did not know. Integrating human rights defenders into HRDD processes is not only a gesture toward civil society. It is a business imperative and the infrastructure to do it safely now exists.