General result

CAO Grievance Mechanism Toolkit

Compliance Advisor Ombudsman
Suite of Tools | Free | Jan 01, 2016

Effective grievance mechanisms are an essential part of accountability and provide initial access to potential redress. They are important for communities impacted by private sector operations, and important for companies in every sector and local context. If your company has committed to positive and respectful engagement with the communities impacted by your operations, then functioning and trusted grievance mechanisms are essential elements of your corporate strategy and procedures. Effective grievance mechanisms are also essential for companies to demonstrate the commitment and value they place on meaningful, ongoing stakeholder engagement. So getting them right, no matter what your business, is critical. In the preparation of this toolkit, it became evident that there are several good grievance mechanism guides available. They emphasize background and theory, and are often geared toward large companies in the extractives sector. They also spend a lot of time on conceptualizing what a grievance mechanism should look like. These are all important elements, but this toolkit doesn’t duplicate this good work. Instead, the purpose of this toolkit is to provide practical templates and guides for companies on how to establish a grievance mechanism. It pulls together some of the work already done on grievance mechanisms into an easily digestible format. It also aims to fill some gaps in the literature by providing guidance for small and medium-sized companies that may not be able to provide the staffing and resources for managing grievance mechanisms that a large extractives company would.The focus of this toolkit is therefore on company-led grievance mechanisms. While there ¡s network being done in the arena of community-led grievance mechanisms, this toolkit has been developed in the context of GAO’s mandate to improve the environmental and social performanceof IFC and MIGA projects. This toolkit should therefore not be used to the exclusion of new and robust methods of community/company engagement. IFC and MIGA find this toolkit useful as an instrument for helping their clients enhance the effectiveness of existing grievance mechanisms, as well as implement best practices in the creationof new grievance mechanisms. Further, we trust that this toolkit will serve as a best practice guide tothose tasked with consulting on, designing, implementing, and assessing grievance mechanisms.

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