Looking Ahead: Five Developments We’ll Be Watching In 2013

As memories of New Year's Eve fade, and another Inauguration Day winds down in Washington, D.C., it's time to look ahead and identify key events and emerging trends that we think will help shape the business and human rights agenda in 2013.

Here are five developments that we'll be watching closely:

Further integration of human rights considerations into business management systems. Eighteen months after the release of the U.N. Guiding Principles, companies are working to determine how best to incorporate human rights considerations into the management of their operations. In a recent report,  State of Play: The Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human Rights in Business Relationships,  the Institute for Business and Human Rights and the Global Business Initiative for Human Rights ("GBI") observed that "[c]ompanies are actively learning from their efforts to integrate environment, health and safety, and anti-bribery and corruption concerns in their management