(Washington, D.C. | April 5, 2024) On March 22, the Biden Administration released the 2024 United States Government National Action Plan on Responsible Business Conduct (NAP). This 2024 NAP is the result of a roughly two-and-a-half-year process to revitalize and update the first NAP released at the end of the Obama Administration in December 2016. While it has limitations, the 2024 NAP represents a significant improvement from the 2016 NAP, and overall, it reflects a clear commitment to use the levers of governmental power to drive business respect for human rights.

The 2024 NAP is clearly organized into three sections. Section I focuses on the government’s approach to due diligence. Section II details four priority areas that the government has identified for increased action on responsible business conduct, and summarizes forward-looking commitments in those areas, including: (1) Establishing a Federal Advisory Committee on Responsible Business Conduct; (2) Strengthening Respect for Human Rights in Federal Procurement Policies and Processes; (3) Strengthening Access to Remedy; and (4) Providing Resources to Businesses. Finally, section III contains details on those priority area commitments and includes additional commitments related to other issue areas such as technology, just transition, workers’ rights, and anticorruption.

“While ICAR would have loved to see more ambitious commitments laid out in this NAP, there is a lot in here that we’re excited about and that can be built on moving forward,” said David McKean, Executive Director of the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR). “NAPs are meant to be iterative, living documents, so we see this as the next step in a longer, continuous dialogue and process of engagement with the U.S. Government on the issue of responsible business conduct.”

ICAR’s initial assessment has found that while the 2016 NAP was largely focused on reciting past actions, the 2024 NAP is much more focused on laying out forward-looking commitments. These commitments are also quite specific, and clearly identify the government bodies responsible for implementation. The NAP also pays clear attention to the issue of access to remedy and seeks to reflect a whole-of-government approach, with commitments coming from 33 offices at 15 agencies, including via three interagency working groups or councils. Among the key drawbacks of this 2024 NAP include the late timing of its release and the fact that many of the commitments are focused on continued exploration or consideration of taking an action, rather than a commitment to taking that action.

As we have done in the past, ICAR will be conducting a more thorough analysis over the coming weeks and will release a full, structured assessment of the 2024 NAP, using the NAPs Checklist developed and published by ICAR and the Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR) as part of the ICAR-DIHR NAPs Toolkit. The NAPs Checklist lays out a set of twenty-five criteria that address both the content of NAPs and the process for developing them. In addition to this assessment, our attention will also be turning to implementation of the NAP, as this will require continued engagement with USG over the next nine months.

“While ICAR is pleased to see the release of the NAP, we now need to see the U.S. Government’s focus on implementation to ensure that it does not end up being just words on a paper,” said Nicole Vander Meulen, Legal & Policy Director at ICAR. “ICAR will be working with our civil society partners to closely monitor progress and push the U.S. Government to follow through on its commitments.”