Session organised by the Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR), the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR), the Ethical Trading Initiative Norway (ETI Norway), and the Harrison Institute for Public Law of Georgetown University Law Center.Brief description of the session:This session will look at how public procurement at the sub-national level can be used as a lever for greater corporate human rights due diligence. It will focus on identifying transferable good practice examples and lessons learnt from those working with this topic.
Previous sessions at the UN BHR Forum have looked at human rights and public procurement at the national level. This session will look at human rights and public procurement at the sub-national level including local and municipal governments, cities, universities, and hospitals. It will address the unique challenges and opportunities faced at this level including building leverage, ensuring policy coherence between the national and sub-national institutions, and developing institutional capacity.
Session objectives:- Demonstrate how public procurement can be used, per the UNGPs and SDG 12.7, as a lever for extending the practice of corporate human rights due diligence in local economies and global supply chains
- Uncover transferable good practice examples and lessons learned
Key discussion questions:- How can public buyers introduce due diligence requirements for suppliers at different stages of the procurement lifecycle?
- How can collaborative purchasing models allow public buyers to capture synergies and multiply purchasing power in pursuit of human rights?
- How can you engage suppliers in dialogue and capacity building on due diligence requirements?
- How can you demonstrate that human rights due diligence requirements increase "value for money" while advancing realisation of the SDGs locally and across borders?
Format:- 20 minutes for short presentations from the panellists
- 30 minutes for questions directed to the panellist from the moderator
- 25 minutes for questions from the audience
Background to the discussion:Public procurement refers to the process by which public authorities, such as government departments or local authorities, purchase work, goods, or services from businesses
. In Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) States, public procurement contracts account for
12% of GDP on average and is a substantial component of the overall economy. Public procurement, therefore, has the potential to influence global supply chains in a positive or negative way. Government departments and other public authorities and institutions that purchase goods and services
can take measures to prevent human rights abuses being perpetrated by those they are procuring from by ensuring that human rights protections are included within provisions and clauses of tender-related documentation and resulting contracts. Such human rights protections can decrease the likelihood of human rights abuses from occurring and so reduce the risk (both reputational and financial) of those procuring goods and services benefitting from, and/ or being linked to, human rights violations and abuses.
The
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development highlights in Target 12.7 that to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns that States should “Promote public procurement practices that are sustainable, in accordance with national policies and priorities”.
The
UN Guiding Principles (UNGPs) on Business and Human Rights afford special attention to the state’s role when it acts as a commercial actor. Guiding Principle 6 provides that “States should promote respect for human rights by business enterprises with which they conduct commercial transactions.”
