Making Human Rights Due Diligence Work

Landmark publication on human rights due diligence published by University of Greenwich

All workers in the world have a right to decent work: safe and healthy working conditions, protection against discrimination, fair and adequate remuneration, freedom of association, and other fundamental human rights that are enshrined in international labour standards. Regardless, the global production of goods is tainted by the abuse of human rights. Every global supply chain, and many local ones, in sectors from food and beverage, electronics, garments, surgical material to bricks and stones present serious risks of human and labour rights violations to workers.

In recent years, companies have been called to exercise ‘human rights due diligence’ when taking commercial decisions, which means identifying, preventing and mitigating the human rights risks and impact of their activities.

Different countries have also passed legislation to make it mandatory for companies to implement such due diligence strategies or to report on their efforts to address human rights risks, including in the UK through the Modern Slavery Act (2015). This month, the European Commission announced that it will propose new rules on mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence in EU companies’ global supply chains.

The Sustainable Trade and Responsible Business (STRB) Development Programme of the Natural Resources Institute (NRI) and the Business, Human Rights and the Environment Research Group (BHRE) at the University of Greenwich, have published their report ‘Making Human Rights Due Diligence Work: An Analysis of Impact and Legal Options’, commissioned by the Fair Trade Advocacy Office and Brot für die Welt, and authored by Professor Valerie Nelson, Professor Olga Martin-Ortega and Michael Flint. In the report, the authors present the current evidence on the impact of human rights due diligence on the ground in two sectors: agriculture and textiles. Through desk-based research, a significant number of interviews with key actors, and validation of the findings through stakeholder workshops, the authors developed a theory of how policy and regulatory developments on corporate human rights due diligence are anticipated to effect change on companies, their suppliers and the workers and communities affected. They also provide a series of recommendations which will inform civil society in their advocacy efforts and advise policy makers in their attempts to develop effective mandatory human rights due diligence frameworks.

The COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated that, now more than ever, human rights due diligence is critically important for the protection of workers in global supply chains. The need for human rights due diligence is thrown into sharp relief by the pandemic, as pressure builds on certain supply chains to produce faster and larger quantities of goods in some sectors, while others come to a complete standstill, creating many different, serious risks of human rights abuses. Our report seeks to contribute to better understanding of how mandatory due diligence may work, and how it can be improved, as well as pointing to additional measures which are needed to protect human rights.

The Executive Summary of the Report is available here

The Full Report is available here

Beyond Corporate Transparency- The Right to Know

The BHRE has partnered with the GoodElectronics Network (GE) and the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) to advance our work on supply chain transparency. In May we released a report that proposes a new approach to the urgent need for disclosure and transparency in the global electronics industry. “Beyond corporate transparency. The right to know in the electronics industry”, leaves behind the stale concept of voluntary corporate disclosure, and instead makes the strong argument for a rights-based systematic, coherent and mandatory approach to corporate transparency. 

In this report, GE, BHRE and SOMO maintain that the right to information is both a right in itself and a precondition for the realisation of other rights. This report calls for transparency in the global electronics production network from a rights-based approach whereby access to information is a right for workers, their families and members of their communities, and whereby providing information is a duty both of states and businesses.

 The approach to transparency presented in this report is soundly grounded in two frameworks that are rapidly developing in international and national law and practice: the right to information, and corporate human rights due diligence and non-financial disclosure. Rights-based transparency is implicit within businesses’ responsibility to communicate and engage with rights-holders and other relevant parties and explicitly within states’ obligations to protect human rights.

 The fundamental rights of workers in the global electronics industry are violated on a massive scale. Millions of workers are working under precarious and toxic conditions, resulting in poor livelihoods, injury and even death. Corporate secrecy and lack of transparency of supply chains plays a key role in perpetuating these harms. Workers in the global electronics production network, their families and communities are denied access to vital information and not allowed to play a role in decision-making processes which impact their working lives and conditions. Barriers to such information are based on corporate demands of confidentiality that fail to properly take into account the rights of workers.

 Workers, their families, and community members that are affected or potentially affected by the electronics industry are the primary ‘rights-holders’ of the right to know, or, in other words, the right to access information. Companies are responsible for disclosing all information that may impact on, or is necessary to realise workers’ rights, and information that affects workers’ lives and livelihoods to primary rights-holders and to other related parties such as worker representatives and representative organisations. States have the obligation to ensure companies do so and that workers can access and engage meaningfully with such information. This makes states and business enterprises ‘duty bearers’.

 Disclosed information should include facts and figures on trading and purchasing practices; on buyer-supplier relations; on the position of a company in the value chain; on production facilities, including work place conditions and labour force; on corporate human rights due diligence policies and practices, including the mapping of risks and the findings and outcomes thereof; and on materials, components and end-products. The report presents a break-down and detailed list of the information that should ideally be disclosed and communicated, grouped in seven data sets, each with a varying number of data points.

 We hope that the work this report does in identifying transparency why, for whom, of what and how, contributes to advance the clarification and full realisation of the right to know and the duty to inform and exercise due diligence to protect the rights of workers, their families and communities. We also hope this report is useful for your efforts of advocacy, capacity building and calls for corporate accountability.

New LLM in Business, Human Rights and the Environment

We are really excited to announce our new LLM in Business, Human Rights and the Environment! Co-directed by BHRE members Professor Olga Martin-Ortega and Dr. Ozgur Cinar, the new LLM, which is a pathway of our existing LLM in International Commercial Law, will be the first of its kind in Europe.

For more information check our LLM BHRE page.