National Contact Points under OECD’s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises : Institutional Diversity Affecting Assessments of the Delivery of Access to Remedy

This chapter addresses OECD National Contact Points (NCPs) as corporate accountability institutions. It looks at institutional differences between NCPs and their functioning and discusses implications for the provision of procedural as well as substantive remedy for victims of business-related human rights abuse, as well as for assessments of NCP's provision of access to remedy. NCPs serve as an important accountability modality for transnational economic activity and its societal impact, and for the corporate responsibility to respect human rights in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) that do not have an accountability mechanism of their own. NCPs are state-based non-judicial remedy institutions in states that adhere to OECD’s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. Each state has discretion in defining the institutional set-up for its NCP. This results in a broad variety of, among others, compositions of NCPs, their organization and of degrees of independence from the government. Studies have indicated that the diversity of institutional set-up of NCPs may affect their legitimacy with stakeholders, in turn influencing trust in NCPs as remedy institutions able to deliver accountability. However, it is also necessary to consider stakeholders’ expectations in regard to remedy, and the procedural as well as substantive aspects of remedy. Analyzing the institutional set-up of NCPs against procedural and substantive aspects of ‘remedy’, specific cases, and statistics on home and host state-related specific instances, the chapter provides a critical analysis of the issues set out, and makes recommendations for enhancing the remedial function provided by NCPs for corporate accountability