Session organized by UnicefShort description of the session:Every business leaves a footprint on children — as family members of workers, employees, consumers, and community members affected by operations and supply chains. The Children’s Rights and Business Atlas is an online tool designed to help business, government and industry stakeholders better understand their footprint, and how inter-related issues including wages, work hours, products, environmental impact, security, and online protection policies, impact children. An online interactive and data-driven platform, the Atlas makes use of publicly available country data to provide a quantitative assessment of children’s rights across 195 countries and territories, and degree to which children’s rights are respected, across the globe in the Workplace, at the Marketplace, and within the Community and Environment.
Session Objectives:The objective of the session is to inform business how it can make use of the Workplace, Marketplace and Community and Environment Indices, country narratives and industry insights provided by the Atlas, to lessen the negative child impact through improved due diligence risk and impact assessment processes based on evidence.
Key discussion questions:- Why is children's rights due diligence especially critical for the achievement of the SDGs?
- How can the Atlas help businesses to approach comprehensive due diligence?
Background to the Discussion: Children everywhere have rights. These include: the right of every child to provision of a standard of living adequate for health and well-being; the right of every child to protection from neglect, abuse, exploitation and harmful substances; and the right of every child to full participation in family, cultural and social life. Addressing adverse children’s rights impacts requires the taking of adequate measures for prevention, mitigation and, where appropriate, remediation.
Business impacts children daily well beyond child labour. The employment of their family and the broader environmental and community conditions where business operates affect children’s ability to grow, develop and learn. The nature of the work done by children and their family can determine, for example, how women breastfeed, how men and women parent, and how adolescents successfully transition from school to work.
Respect for children’s rights is a shared responsibility. Children represent one third of the world’s underlying population but disproportionately account for half of the world’s poor, highlighting their vulnerability and the necessity of prioritizing children in the fight to eliminate poverty. Business can contribute to sustainable development for all in support of the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals by taking a child-centred approach to policy and practice.
Refreshments will be served after the session
