The UNGPs advise that where prioritisation is critical businesses ought to first seek to forestall and mitigate those human rights harms that are most severe or where delayed response would make them irremediable. The UNGPs subsequently recommend periodic evaluations of a business’ salient, or most extreme, human rights risks, which shall be particularly relevant in occasions of fast change or crisis. Importantly saliency must be viewed when it comes to essentially the most severe dangers to human beings, not risks to a business, though the two usually intersect with reputational, operational and in some circumstances legal penalties for businesses failing to respect human rights.
