laying the groundwork to prevent and remedy human rights violations by multinational
companies.
The Commission held the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights
Institutions(hereafter 'APF') on business and human rights, where it adopted the Statement
on Asia Pacific National Human Rights Institutions on Business and Human Rights. The
statement covers businesses’ responsibility to respect human rights, governments’
compliance with international treaties and standards on business and human rights, and
active measures to be taken by NI, in which business activities of multinational
companies can have an impact on human rights. The forum served as a good opportunity
to share interest in business and human rights in Korea and beyond, and discuss in full
scale the United Nations (hereafter 'UN') ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ Framework for
Business and Human Rights.
The Commission found that a homeless with disability was not provided support
necessary to exercise the right to defend him/her in legal proceedings, and delivered its
opinion that the court needed to consider such circumstances, in order to remedy the
victim’s violated rights.
The Commission reviewed the partial amendment to the Wage Claim Guarantee Act to
protect human rights of vulnerable labor groups, and recommended that it should be
reasonable to develop standards for deciding who are subject to assistance in order to
make sure that there are no loopholes in protecting their rights.
It also researched culture, art and sports industries to observe current status of labor
market structure, labor demand and supply system, and industrial workers’ perspectives
on labor, and analyzed their overall human rights conditions as well as the industrial
structures that are designed to produce non-regular workers. The result is expected to shed
meaningful light on setting directions of human rights policies for non-regular staffs
engaging in specialized industries and identifying future projects. The Commission also
made prompt responses to social issues including an ad-hoc investigation on forced
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Part I. Introduction