All businesses have the responsibility to respect, promote and protect human rights.

The growing influence of business enterprises had stretched across national borders --- bringing both opportunities for development and possibilities of human rights violations.

In China, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Goggle involved in complicity in human rights abuses by assisting the Chinese government to monitor and censor the internet, and to prosecute its citizens for expressing their opinions.

In Bhopal, India, a gas leakage at a pesticide factory owned by US company Union Carbine in 1984 resulted in 7,000 immediate deaths, at least 15,000 deaths in the following 2 decades and more than 100,000 suffer from chronic illness related to gas exposure.

In Africa, the trade of conflict diamond (or blood diamond) had fueled armed conflicts there, threatening the lives and safety of the people. The instability had dragged economic growth and contributed to persistent poverty.

Hong Kong is an international commercial and financial centre where many transnational corporations had set up their regional offices. Many Hong Kong-based corporations and conglomerates had also expanded their investments and business activities outside Hong Kong. Amnesty International believes that these companies, while searching for profits, must also obliged to international human rights standards and implement necessary policies and measures so that everyone's human rights under their scope of influence can be duely protected.

Amnesty International believes that businesses must:

- abide by the standards set out by the UN Human Rights Norms for Business and other international human rights instruments;
- avoid complicity in human rights violations;
- include a specific commitment to human rights in their statements of business principles and codes of conduct;
- produce explicit human rights policies and ensure that they are integrated, monitored and audited;
- use their legitimate influence in support of human rights, in all countries where they operate

Governments must:

- ensure companies to comply with standards set out by international human rights instruments through legislation and policy;
- hold companies accountable for their human rights abuses and to ensure victims of these abuses receive appropriate reparation.

Consumers must:

- recognize their responsibilities as a consumer and request the manufacturers / service providers to guarantee that no human rights violation took place on the course of production;
- request manufacturers / service providers to set out policy that materializes the companies’ responsibility to protect human rights.

Investors must:

- recognize their responsibilities as an investors and shareholder and identify whether there is human rights violation committed by the companies they invested in or plan to invest;
- request the companies they invested in to set out policy that materializes the companies’ responsibility to protect human rights.