STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK ON A NATIONAL ACTION PLAN ON BUSINESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS FOR MALAYSIA I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1. This Strategic Framework both explains the rationale and provides an outline for the development of an NAP to ensure business conduct that respects human rights. The objective of the NAP would be to address the challenge of properly managing the adverse impacts of business activities on human rights, to ensure that Malaysia’s transformation into a fully developed country is undertaken in a sustainable manner. The strategy recommended is to use all areas of the Government’s regulation of and interactions with business and economic activities as avenues for ensuring corporate respect for human rights. It identifies what these areas are and, for each area, proposes concrete and achievable actions that can be taken. 2. To move forward with this bold effort, unity in purpose and commitment across a range of government departments is needed. The increasing urgency of meeting Vision 2020’s goal of becoming a fully developed nation by 2020, the looming milestone of ASEAN economic integration by 2015 and the unveiling of the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the same year present an unprecedented convergence of forces and a focal goal for driving and uniting this cross-governmental endeavour. 3. The Strategic Framework and its recommendations are based on the following understandings: 4. 1 § That the State and the business sector have complementary but differentiated roles with regard to human rights. Corporate respect for human rights requires the independent action of businesses themselves. At the same time, the State should provide an appropriate regulatory and policy environment to foster corporate respect for human rights. § That a root cause of the prevalence of business-related human rights abuses around the world has been the siloing by governments of their processes for regulating human rights compliance away from or at the periphery of their processes for regulating business and economic activities. The integration of both these types of processes is needed. § That while it is governments that have the legitimacy, capacities and resources to make the difficult balancing decisions required to reconcile competing societal needs, the occurrence of business-related human rights abuses signals that more needs to be done to get the balance right. § That it is essential for a process to develop an NAP on business and human rights to be Government-owned and led, and that the NAP be formulated based on adequate, informed and inclusive stakeholder consultations. The Strategic Framework recommends that the NAP use the Guiding Principles as its foundational reference. The culmination of six years of in-depth research, extensive multi-stakeholder consultations and practical road-testing, the Guiding Principles provide practical guidance on how States can provide the appropriate policy and regulatory environment to foster corporate respect for human rights. The Guiding Principles identify the different areas where States interact with businesses and articulate how these areas can be used as avenues for ensuring corporate respect for human rights. They also draw attention to a wide range of regulatory tools that governments