2018 United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights

Organized by the Working Group on business and human rights

Brief description of the session:
This session will feature a presentation by the Chairperson of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights, Dante Pesce. The presentation will highlight key findings and recommendations from the Working Group's report to the UN General Assembly in October 2018.
The focus of the report is the concept of corporate human rights due diligence set out in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The presentation will highlight key features of human rights due diligence and why it matters; gaps and challenges in current business and Government practice; emerging good practices; and how key stakeholders — States and the investment community, in particular — can contribute to the scaling-up of effective human rights due diligence.

Key documents

• Working Group report on human rights due diligence to the 2018 General Assembly (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Spanish and Russian)
• Executive summary of the Working Group report on human rights due diligence
• Companion paper I – Corporate human rights due diligence: Background note and elaborating on key aspects
• Companion paper II – Corporate human rights due diligence – Getting started, emerging practices, tools and resources
• Overview of references to human rights due diligence in existing State national action plans on business and human rights
• UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights
• The Corporate Responsibility to Respect: An Interpretive Guide (Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights)

Interpretation is provided in Korean

Organized by Academic Friends of the OECD Guidelines, BHRights Initiative for Interdisciplinary Research and Teaching on Business and Human Rights, Business and Human Rights Young Researchers, Business Schools Promoting Business and Human Rights, European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratization, International Law Association Reading Group on Business and Human Rights, Oxford Business and Human Rights Network.

Brief description of the session:
This session will explore the complex role of business & human rights academic networks of research and teaching in the business and human rights field. Building on the diverse roles that academic networks (understood in a broad sense) can fulfil - such as interpreting, training, facilitating, validating, expert cooperation and consulting - the roundtable aims to open the floor for a wide critical engagement with stakeholders in order to unpack the contribution that academic activities bring to various business and human rights stakeholders and in order to explore new ways of enhancing stakeholder engagement as well as impact.

Session objectives: 
This session aims to:

• Stimulate an interactive discussion with all BHR stakeholders on the role of BHR academic, research and teaching networks and of the multiple perspectives they bring to BHR.
• Provide a platform for multi-stakeholder discussion about whether and how the academics and BHR research and teaching networks, themselves as stakeholders, contribute to shaping the BHR discourse, policy and practice.
• Explore how the BHR networks shape and advance our understanding of how to effectively address corporate human rights challenges
• Reflect on how to preserve critical engagement and independence of thinking in a highly polarised and politicised environment.

Key discussion questions:

• How do research and teaching in these networks help advance the BHR thinking and practice? Which audiences and stakeholders do they reach or should aim to reach?
• How do they contribute to identifying and building on what works in BHR?
• What is the role of ‘action research’ within the BHR scholarly networks? To what extent do the BHR networks engage directly yet critically within the field?
• What is the ‘sphere of influence’ of such BHR networks? How could researchers and BHR networks contribute to enhancing the impact of research results and insights within universities and business schools, as well as externally, among other stakeholders such as businesses, NGOs, government, the media?
• Where do research and teaching on BHR happen and to what extent do other stakeholders have access to those knowledge platforms? Are there regional distinctions? Where are the gaps?
• Should interdisciplinarity be put more firmly on the agenda, promoting systematic collaborations in research and through co-teaching modules? Would (global interdisciplinary) teaching programs (whether in academic or professional settings) be of more use?
• What is the social responsibility that is at stake here? To what extent are these networks developing a ‘scholarly due diligence’, that embeds meaningful engagement with stakeholders?
• Do BHR networks contribute to creating synergies between research and teaching in the field?
• Should research or teaching within these networks be aligned or would this hamper innovative thinking? What is the scope of stakeholder engagement in these activities?
• To what extent are BHR research and scholarship being shaped by funding opportunities or the lack thereof? How can the networks engage with stakeholders – government, businesses, funding bodies – in order to secure both sustainability and impact in research?
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Tentative agenda:
Part I - Introduction by the represented networks
Representatives from the different BHR networks organizing the session will commence with short introductory remarks, presenting briefly selected issues for reflection and debate.

Part II -  Multi-stakeholder dialogue 
The questions set out for discussion will be used to stimulate debate and stakeholder engagement, inviting the audience to reflect on those issues and to identify additional ideas for advancing BHR research and teaching within a multi-stakeholder perspective.

Stakeholders that wish to engage with the proposed issues and share their experience and perspective on being part of a BHR network or on engaging as stakeholders with BHR scholarly platforms will be invited to share their perspective during short interventions of 2-3 minutes or by raising questions and taking part in the debate. The BHR stakeholders and networks that are considering participating in the session with a tabled intervention are encouraged to pre-register, by emailing the organisers at a.voiculescu@westminster.ac.uk. Participants may also submit written statements, before or soon after the session. In the hope of continuing the dialogue, following the debate, the roundtable organisers will aim to disseminate a brief report, summarising the session’s key points. This will be based on the discussion, tabled interventions and submitted written contributions.

Background to the discussion: 
In the past years, a number of academic, research and teaching networks have emerged in the business and human rights (BHR) arena, becoming both creations and co-creators of the BHR field. Reflecting the complex make-up of the field itself, the focus of these networks varies greatly, yet they all aspire to address the points of tension between business activities and human rights, as well as the global challenges that stem from these points of tension. Some of these networks take a broad approach, engaging actively - through research and teaching - with all fields of BHR reflection, policy and practice, while others support specific instruments, such as the UNGPs, the OECD Guidelines or the Global Compact; some engage specific stakeholders - immigrant workers, indigenous populations, refugees - while yet others focus on growing - in classrooms and amphitheatres - generations of BHR-minded lawyers, business managers, financial advisers or, indeed, researchers; some aim for a global reach, while others have a regional or local focus; some are discipline-anchored (management, organization studies, business ethics or law), while others put forth interdisciplinary approaches. In this context, BHR networks develop – and depend – on complex interactions with multiple stakeholders.

Brief description of the presentation:
The French duty of vigilance law has operationalized the United Nations Guiding Principles by creating a new legal obligation for large French companies to implement a vigilance plan (risk mapping, risk management, warning systems and monitoring systems) to prevent serious violations of human rights and the environment, and to publish this plan in their annual reports. 2018 was the first year that companies published their vigilance plans. EDH has released a study on the first vigilance plans to show the first trends in the application of the French law by the companies concerned and to identify application challenges for the companies in order to accompany them in their approaches.

Presentation objectives:
This presentation aims to discuss the main results and global recommendations on the management and monitoring of the approach, including on risk identification, alert systems and public reporting.

Session organized by IHRB, Ergon and Impactt

 
Brief description of the session:
The aim of the session is to provide a structured discussion, with resource people to support / lead, on the impact of sports in general – including but not restricted to Mega Sporting Events – on human rights. The structure of the event will be through the lens of defined rightsholders and impacts on their enjoyment of human rights. The structure of the session is interactive with only short opening presentations and then discussion groups
Key rightsholders for consideration during the session will include: players and athletes, fans, journalists, workers, community members. Cross cutting issues will include treatment of vulnerable people and children, impact on political and civil rights, LGBTQI+ rights, collaboration and stakeholder engagement.

Format of the session:

• Outline of key issues for consideration, some thoughts on how the conversation at tables might be organised – John Morrison.  (10 mins)
• Group discussions – each person picks 2 out of 4 (2 x 30 mins - 60 mins total)

The room will split into 4 groups focusing on: fans and communities; players and athletes; journalists and human rights defenders; direct and indirect workers.
Each group will have at least two resource people who will give a very brief (5-minute total maximum) outline of what they see the key issues are from their perspective for the group in question.
The group will then either split into smaller groups or stay as one (depending on the numbers) to discuss the following questions: what rights can be impacted and how? How can due diligence be carried out in the sports sector to identify impacts on rightsholders? What actions can be taken to reduce negative impacts and provide remedy?  Using stickie notes, the groups will be asked to map their impacts against potential responsive actions and stick them on the wall when the conversation is concluding.

• Round up (Steve Gibbons and Rosey Hurst) (10 mins)
• Call out of quick interesting points from the discussions based on identified people

Organized by the B Team, Center for Economic and Social Rights, Christian Aid, Financial Transparency Coalition and Oxfam

Brief description of the session:
When working well, business tax contributions fund key programs crucial for gender equality and women’s rights, including education, health, and care services. In contrast, when businesses avoid tax, public services go under-funded and consumption taxes are often increased, both of which disproportionately burden women. This session will drill down on the connection between responsible corporate tax practice and the corporate responsibility to respect human rights set out in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. It will engage discussants from the audience in a multi-stakeholder dialogue on methods for driving responsible corporate tax practice that avoids adverse impacts on human rights.

Session objectives: 
This session will draw out practice-based recommendations on how the UN Guiding Principles’ three pillars of “Protect, Respect and Remedy” can be leveraged by governments, companies and communities to ensure responsible tax practice. In order to enable a concrete and solution-oriented discussion the session will have a special focus on connecting responsible tax practice and women’s rights, and in particular how to rectify the often-hidden women’s rights risks posed by certain corporate tax practices. It will also focus on how companies are beginning to understand how paying tax in a transparent and responsible way is an important way in which they can positively contribute to the communities in which they operate.
 
Key discussion questions:
 o What is the relationship between tax policy and human rights, in particular women’s rights?
o What are the duties and responsibilities of governments under the UN Guiding Principles’ Pillar I (State duty to protect) as related to business taxation? What are some examples of good state practice to enable corporate human rights due diligence on tax matters?
o How can Pillar II of the Guiding Principles (corporate responsibility to respect) be leveraged to restore more responsible business taxation in practice? What are examples of good corporate tax behavior in line with the corporate responsibility to respect human rights?
o What is the role of other stakeholders (e.g. investors, civil society organizations) in encouraging companies to view responsible tax practice as a way to meet their corporate responsibility to respect human rights – and that avoiding adverse impacts from irresponsible tax avoidance in fact would be a significant positive contribution to sustainable development in the societies in which they operate?
o What role does political influencing play, and to what degree does business’ tax lobbying affect both the state duty to protect and business’s responsibility to respect women’s rights?
o In light of Pillar III of the Guiding Principles (access to remedy for victims), what would effective remedy for corporate tax abuse look like, in practice?

Format of the session:
After an initial introduction by the moderator, this session will kick off with the presentation of a brief illustrative case of the risks irresponsible corporate tax practices pose to women’s rights. Practitioners from business, civil society, community, and government will then engage in a round-table discussion on how the UN Guiding Principles could be leveraged to address this type of situation.

Background to the discussion:
There is growing consensus amongst governments, the human rights protection system and civil society that taxation—in particular corporate tax policy—is a vital tool for the realization of economic, social and cultural rights. Ample evidence also suggests that women and girls are hurt the most when the ability of the ability of states to realize such rights is hampered by tax losses. Likewise, more and more companies are recognizing that paying their fair share of tax is a fundamental business responsibility.[1] Business groups are also recognising the importance of good governance in the area of tax incentives in the global South,[2] and some are adopting a set of Responsible Tax Principles.[3] When working well, business tax contributions fund key programs crucial for gender equality and women’s rights, including education, health, and care services. In contrast, when businesses avoid tax, public services go under-funded and consumption taxes are often increased, both of which disproportionately burden women.
In light of the significant human rights risks posed by irresponsible corporate tax practice, how can the UN business and human rights framework be leveraged to ensure responsible corporate tax policy and practice? “There is a need,” according to the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights, “to better delineate roles, responsibilities and appropriate accountability systems for both States and business enterprises with regard to specific issues, such as … tax avoidance.”[4] The State duty to protect human rights in its corporate tax policies, the business responsibility to respect human rights and carry out due diligence in their tax practices, and the need for effective remedy for tax abuse are all relevant, yet still emerging dimensions of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

[1] KPMG, 2017. ‘Responsible Tax and the Developing World: Is tax a fundamental human right?' at https://responsibletax.kpmg.com/page/responsible-tax-and-the-developing-world-is-tax-a-fundamental-human-right-
[2] ActionAid, CBI, Christian Aid and Oxfam, 2018. ‘Tax Incentives in the Global South: a business and civil society brief’ at https://www.christianaid.org.uk/resources/about-us/tax-incentives-global-south-business-and-civil-society-brief
[3] The B-Team, “A New Bar for Responsible Tax: The B Team Responsible Tax Principles”
[4] A/HRC/29/28; See also John Ruggie, 2017: “Neither the income inequality nor the base erosion and profit shifting associated with the current structure of corporate globalization are socially sustainable” at https://www.ihrb.org/other/supply-chains/making-economic-globalisation-work-for-all-speech-by-prof.-john-ruggie

http://webtv.un.org/search/panel-on-human-rights-in-mining-sector-forum-on-business-and-human-rights-2018/5971635102001/?term=&lan=english&cat=Forum%20on%20Business%20and%20Human%20Rights&page=2

Background to the discussion:
In January this year, Blackrock’s Chairman and CEO, Lawrence Fink, wrote an open letter to business leaders noting that, “to sustain… performance, you must understand the societal impact of your business”. Businesses have the potential to impact society in a range of ways, negatively and positively. Implementing the UN Guiding Principles allows companies to understand and address some of these potential impacts as they relate to human rights.  
Good governance and a strong board are critical to making respect for human rights part of how business gets done, thereby advancing a range of human rights in society, while protecting and creating value for the business. As Fink noted, “a company’s ability to manage environmental, social and governance matters demonstrates the leadership and good governance that is so essential to sustainable growth.” Board engagement is essential to improved performance over the long term, in providing rigorous oversight and accountability, in developing strategy and articulating purpose and responding to questions that are increasingly important to its investors, its consumers, and the communities in which it operates.

Key questions:

• What does the board see from a governance perspective and what expertise do they bring to the table?
• What do they discuss and how do they work with their CEO and management team in and out of the boardroom to manage risks to business and risks to people, reputation and long-term value to shareholders?
• What challenges and opportunities do they see for improving performance in their sector? 

Jane Nelson, Board member of  Newmont, will offer her perspective on why this agenda matters to Newmont and how she is working with Newmont’s leadership to drive it forward, including highlighting some of the challenges they face in practice. 
Human rights have long been a concern of socially responsible investors, but there are indications that human rights are moving onto the agenda of mainstream investors. Why does this matter to investors and what do they expect to see in terms of board oversight and governance?
Tom Butler, CEO of ICMM, a CEO -led association of 27 global mining companies, will talk to the commitments ICMM member companies make on board oversight and governance and share reflections from the industry on investor engagement on social issues and human rights.

Format: 
This session will provide an opportunity for an interactive and constructive discussion where participants are able to engage directly with senior leaders on key human rights topics, with a focus on driving performance through knowing, showing and acting. It will complement the opening plenary session on the role of CEOs/ Senior management on leading from the top (see below).
The format and structure will be guided by input from the speakers and the moderator. One suggestion is that each panel member has 5 minutes for an opening pitch to the floor and then the moderator leads a discussion across the panel on 2-3 substantive issues before opening to the floor. We can gather Q&A from the floor during the session and pull them together for the moderator to select and ask.

 
Brief description of the presentation:
The French duty of vigilance law requires parent companies to identify and manage human-rights risks. How to take into account the highly operational nature of human rights issues and provide appropriate responses on the ground? This session is a case study as to how companies and international trade unions can work together collaboratively to address human rights risks at the country level in Qatar and find solutions in cases where human risks have risen.

Presentation objectives:
This presentation aims to provide a practical example of human rights risks management at a country level: Vinci’s risk management of living and working conditions in Qatar.

Brief description of the presentation:
The French law applies to large companies with international activities. It requires the implementation of a global risk prevention process (identification, evaluation, management and monitoring) covering different thematic areas within the company. How can we lead the process, promote cross-functionality and involve all stakeholders?

Presentation objectives:
This presentation aims to give two examples of companies for the deployment of an effective approach within large groups of companies: the example of Orange on how to work together and to build a shared vision; and the example of BNP Paribas on how to support the process through appropriate training actions.

Short description of the presentation:
The legal landscape is developing fast, with increasing focus on a company’s control over human rights impacts of the supply chain. Many companies are only just starting to explore the complexities of such supply chain human rights due diligence.

Presentation objectives:
This session will highlight some of the key findings of a recent study by the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) with Norton Rose Fulbright (NRF) on existing and emerging practices for supply chain HRDD across a range of sectors. It will also consider these trends against the growing legal framework applicable to supply chain management, and what still needs to be done to achieve the supply chain HRDD envisioned by the UNGPs.

Brief description of the presentation:
The UN Guiding Principles (UNGPs) indicate the need for regular operational-level human rights impact assessments as part of human rights due diligence (HRDD). In order to hold each other accountable to the global minimum standard for responsible business conduct, the UNGPs,  companies need to develop an expected level of information to be exchanged in business relationships, documenting that appropriate HRDD is in place. This way business partners can be mutually assured that the relationship does not expose the partners to unmanaged risks.

Presentation objectives: 
This snapshot session centres on the need to be able to document HRDD. Subsequent sessions seek to illustrate what documentation of HRDD may look like in practice, and how the use of the UNGPs as the common reference point can scale up respect for human rights. How to make HRDD concrete, pragmatic, practical and effective? And how to document the work, stressing the importance of building internal capacity for implementation and maintenance of HRDD.

Brief description of the presentation:
The session focuses on the advantages of working together; sharing results, developing tools, increasing leverage and how to cater for different sizes of companies in documenting HRDD through operational-level impact assessments.

Presentation objectives: 
In this snapshot session, the Danish Restaurateur’s Guarantee Association, REGA, shares experiences on the collaboration, committing and assisting key actors within the industry to conduct and document HRDD.

Interpretation is provided in English, French and Spanish

Session organized by Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) and Article One.

Brief description of the session:
Artificial intelligence (AI) will transform how we live, interact, work, do business, and govern. The human rights benefits of these disruptions could be significant, such as improved health diagnostics, enhanced education systems, better fraud prevention, and self-driving vehicles that improve road safety.
However, evidence is mounting about potential adverse human rights impacts too. This includes new forms of discrimination arising from algorithmic bias, increased potential of surveillance using facial recognition tools, and new risks to child rights as the volume of data collected about children increases substantially.
These diverse risks and opportunities are united by three key features: the complexity of the technologies being deployed; the speed with which impacts may take hold; and the considerable uncertainty about how AI will evolve.

Session objectives:
Share the process and findings from human rights impact assessments of AI, increase awareness of how AI can enhance due diligence, and stimulate new thinking about human rights due diligence methods capable of addressing an uncertain future.

Key discussion questions:

• Can we build tools and methods equipped to address the complexity, speed, and uncertainty of AI?
• What due diligence should be undertaken across the AI value chain, including during the use phase?
• What is the respective role of technology and non-technology companies?
• How can human rights due diligence be incorporated into product design?
• How can AI be used to improve human rights due diligence?

Format 
This roundtable discussion will take the form of a participatory dialogue (no speeches) about emerging practices, challenges, and solutions for human rights due diligence in the context of AI.

Brief description of the presentation:
In this session, Sticks’n’Sushi, part of the REGA initiative, shares experiences conducting its first operational impact assessment as part of documenting HuRi through collaboration with other restaurants; and the potential for addressing systemic challenges for the industry in collaboration with peers.

Presentation objectives:
CEO Kim Rahbek presents on the influence the initiative has and the benefits it brings Sticks’n’Sushi.

Brief description of the presentation:
This session both introduces the screening tool Polaris uses when assessing the degree of alignment with the UNGPs of potential investments and the process from engaging in partnership with the portfolio company to aligning with the UNGPs.
 
Presentation objectives:
In this snapshot session, Polaris presents the UNGPs application in investment.

Brief description of the presentation:
This snapshot session presents experiences with starting operational-level impact assessments at the headquarters of an ICT company.

Presentation objectives:
Configit shares examples of good practice documentation and the process of implementation of the UNGPs after entering into a partnership with Polaris.

Brief description of the presentation:
In this session Schur International by referencing its work with the subsidiary Schur Packaging Denmark discusses how documented operational-level impact assessments are used when engaging with key suppliers, Stora Enso, but also downstream partners.

Presentation objectives:
The session also focuses on sharing experiences from creating a corporate culture around the commitment and engaging subsidiaries.

Brief description of the presentation:
In this snapshot session Stora Enso, an important supplier to Schur Packaging Denmark, presents on their work with HRDD and the need to be able to rely on business partners to respect human rights; and the reactions to the approach from Schur Packaging Denmark.

Presentation objectives:
This session focuses on what is sufficient in order to meet supplier and customer demands, and the potential of documented operational-level impact assessments to become standard to answer B2B expectations.

Organized by Global Compact Local Network (Brazil, China, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Korea, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom) and United Nations Global Compact

The Local Networks engaged in the coordination of this session have developed the following informal pre-read for this session, providing a snapshot of BHR initiatives of Local Networks of the UN Global Compact around the world. You can access the document here


Brief description of the session:
The UN Global Compact is the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative, with over 9500 business participants from across all regions of the world. Crucially, Global Compact Local Networks operate in 71 countries to support businesses on their sustainability journey in their own regions. This session will present practical perspectives from across the world on the theme of:
Better connecting responsible businesses across global supply chains
Global Compact Local Networks operate across all regions of the world, and include companies from the bottom to the top of global supply chains. This segment brings together businesses at both ends of the supply chain, to address how responsible businesses on both sides can better connect to promote respect and support for human rights.
The Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights clarify that enterprises have an independent responsibility to respect human rights and that in order to do so they are required to exercise human rights due diligence. In a recent report on the state of play of corporate human rights due diligence in practice, the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights found that "Translating corporate policies into local contexts, for example in subsidiaries, is a challenge across sectors. There is typically a disconnect between the corporate level and implementation on the ground as well as gaps in internal alignment between functions and incentive structures. ...An apparent gap in current supply chain management is that human rights due diligence tends to be limited to tier-one companies."
The panellists will share their experience in implementing effective human rights due diligence across supply chains, and discuss some of the ways they and their partners are looking to improve supply chain management in the future. From the perspective of headquarters, a local subsidiary, and a local supplier, the panellists will examine how disconnects can arise between these actors - and identify some of the best ways to overcome them.

Session objectives:

• Illustrate how the UNGPs are implemented in practice, , including some of the main challenges, existing good practice and potential areas for improvement

• Identify the main “disconnects” in respecting human rights along supply chains between headquarters, subsidiaries and local suppliers
• Build understanding on the role of human rights in procurement decisions
• Portray good practices of companies from different regions

Format of the session:
Tentative Agenda:

• Welcome (2 minutes)
• Better connecting responsible businesses across global supply chains
  • Introductory Remarks by Sustainable Procurement & Human Rights Expert (10 minutes)
  • Moderated interactive discussion between business panellists (40 minutes)
  • Interventions from the floor from other LNs speakers (5 minutes)
  • Q&A and Discussion with the Audience (20 minutes)
• Closing & Call to Action (3 minutes)

Audience Engagement 
 This session will engage the audience by using the Q&A and polling application slido,

Interpretation is provided into Spanish

Organized by UNICEF

Short description and session objectives:
This session will explore different methods of conducting human rights due diligence with consideration of children’s rights and voice, and the role of different stakeholders in making this happen including investors, governments, companies and UN agencies. The session will consider both challenges and solutions to the integration of child rights into business processes by engaging the audience in an interactive and participatory manner.  

Format:
Interactive discussion between main panel speakers and different interventions from the floor representing different perspectives and voices.


Background to the discussion:
The focus of the session is to emphasize the need for companies to take specific measures to understand and address their potential impacts on groups and communities that may be at heightened risk of vulnerability or marginalization. Children are often the most vulnerable population, requiring specific attention to guarantee respect for their human rights. It is possible that one business activity might not impact the rights of adults, but the same activity could adversely impact the rights of a child. Despite this, children have not been adequately considered by business. Companies’ consideration of their impact on child rights is often relegated to the issue of child labour or community investment, yet the impacts of business on children extend to such aspects as product design and advertising, the behaviour of staff towards children, and children’s rights in the supply chain, and the ways that companies operate in the wider community. Moreover, children are usually less well placed to advocate for their own interests and may be silenced within their households or communities. Unless companies make dedicated efforts to understand the risks they pose to child rights, and engage child rights advocates – children may be at risk of exclusion from companies’ human rights due diligence and stakeholder engagement processes.

Interpretation is provided in English, French and Spanish

Organized by Business and Human Rights Resource Centre and the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR)

Description:
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is marked by technological advance of unprecedented scale and velocity—carrying with it tremendous promise and risk. The automation of low-skilled jobs has the potential to bring positive human rights impacts, such as improved workplace safety. However, there is also a risk that the use of machines to increase productivity will result in mounting inequality through downward pressure on wages and loss of jobs. Workers in low-skilled positions, particularly in the apparel and electronics sectors in the Global South, face an increased risk of bearing the negative effects of automation. Women and migrant workers make up large portions of both of these workforces and as they tend to face greater discrimination in the workplace, may be more likely to be displaced by machines.

This session will explore emerging practices, challenges, and solutions for human rights due diligence in the context of automation. It will address the question of whether today’s human rights due diligence tools and methods are equipped to address the impacts of increased automation and explore good practices in human rights due diligence for companies. This session will strongly feature the perspectives and experiences of workers and will also touch on the importance of supportive policies and the role of government.

Objectives:

• Catalyze companies, NGOs, government representatives and other stakeholders to acknowledge the human rights impacts of increased automation and mechanization within global supply chains, using apparel and electronics manufacturing as examples and by amplifying the voices of potentially affected workers;
• Utilize existing frameworks to determine concrete steps key stakeholders and businesses should take to protect workers in their supply chains as their company or its suppliers increasingly integrate automation; and
• Explore the shared responsibility of companies, governments, and other key stakeholders to protect the rights of workers and impacted communities throughout the transition to the future of work.

Discussion Segments

• Segment 1 – framing comments on the human rights risks and potential positive benefits associated with automation and mechanization
• Segment 2 – worker perspectives
• Segment 3 – workshop to explore the application of existing frameworks in the context of human rights due diligence and the human rights risks to automation. Participants will not need to be familiar with the details of each framework, as each group will receive discussion questions, as well as the relevant points about the key concepts within each framework.
  • BSR Responsible Automation Framework
  • Just Transition Framework
  • Factory Closures and Retrenchment Best Practices
• Segment 4 – report back and discussion

Format
The session will take place in the form of a workshop and discussion with comments from key discussants representing workers, companies, civil society organisations, and governments. Key discussans will frame the discussion, provide unique perspectives, or lead discussion groups, depending on their role. Key discussants are intended to encourage interactivity and dialogue within workshop groups before the floor is opened up to discussion on the given framework. Moderators will also provide a brief summary of the discussion at the end of the session.

Organized by the German Institute for human Rights

Background to the discussion:
Blanket statements about the internet’s role in society now and over the last twenty-five years almost all come across as banal. Whether in the global north or south, in developed or developing countries, in urban or rural areas, the vast majority of human lives are touched in some way by the internet. Even if its political implications originally seemed limited to things like freedom of speech, it is now clear from the events of the last ten years that the internet can topple dictatorships and serve as the catalyst for sweeping social movements—and that it can also fuel violence against minorities and derail elections by propagating conspiracy theories.
Private companies play a central role in all this. The internet itself is just a technical standard; it is private companies—social networks, chat software, news sites, payment providers—that determine what can be done with it, how, and by whom. They are the entities that shape what we really refer to when we talk about the societal phenomenon that is the internet. And so this session asks: are these companies a threat to human rights? Are they tools of liberation or surveillance service providers for oppressors? Experts in the field will step away from their normal positions and institutional roles and have a debate about first principles in a way rarely allowed for by panel discussions.

Session format:
The debate will follow the British parliamentary debate format, similar to the format used at the Oxford Union and elsewhere. The session will begin with four speakers, two in support of and two in opposition to the question. There will then be a brief period in which the floor is open to audience interventions in response to the speeches. The debate will be concluded by a final speech from each side, followed by an audience vote on the question.
The result of the vote will be announced at a drinks and canapes reception following the debate.

How to participate:
No advance registration is required. Audience members will have the opportunity to make spontaneous interventions during the middle part of the debate.

Brief description of the session:
Human rights due diligence is an ongoing process that requires companies to maintain a “true picture” of its human rights risks over time. In particular, commentary to UN GP 18 notes that human rights impact assessments should be undertaken at regular intervals and specifically prior to “major decisions or changes in the operation”. While not explicitly mentioned in the commentary, one of the major decision a business can take is that of leaving a market and reducing or winding up operations. While this decision can be taken for purely commercial reasons, it can also be conditioned by changing political, economic or physical circumstances such as the eruption or intensification of war, the occurrence of natural disasters, the instatement of economic sanctions or even health crises. These events might impact the capacity of the company to identify, avoid and manage human rights risks and present renewed challenges for the company to fulfil its responsibility to respect human rights. How can companies wind down or exit operations responsibly under such circumstances?

Session objectives:
While the business and human rights debate has been focused on key corporate decisions such as market entry, new investments or the launching of new products or services, less attention has been given to questions of sales and market exit – especially in circumstances of urgent exit. The purpose of the snapshot session will be to raise awareness of this issue and spur interest in exploring the implications of the UNGPs.

http://webtv.un.org/meetings-events/human-rights-council/forum-on-business-and-human-rights/watch/panel-on-human-rights-due-diligence-forum-on-business-and-human-rights-2018/5972028985001/?term=

Organized by the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights in collaboration with the OECD

Short description of the session:
The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights clarify that all business enterprises have an independent responsibility to respect human rights, and that in order to do so they are required to exercise human rights due diligence to identify, prevent, mitigate and account for how they address impacts on human rights. The introduction of this concept was one of the major contributions of the Guiding Principles.
The 2018 release of the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Business Conduct provided another important step forward in helping clarify what human rights due diligence involves in practical steps. As it is in full alignment with the UN Guiding Principles, these two frameworks together provide a solid foundation promoting and scaling up responsible business conduct in a coherent and effective way. Also issued in 2018, a report by the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights on to the UN General Assembly further highlights key features of human rights due diligence and why it matters; gaps and challenges in current business and Government practice; emerging good practices; and how key stakeholders — States and the investment community, in particular — can contribute to the scaling-up of effective human rights due diligence.

Session objectives
This Forum session takes place against this background with a view to:

• Highlight the essential elements of human rights due diligence set out in the UN Guiding Principles and the OECD Due Diligence Guidance.
• Demonstrate the close alignment between these two frameworks.
• Engage stakeholders in a discussion on the way forward for achieving wider and comprehensive uptake of human rights due diligence in standard business practice.

The discussion will also set the stage for the 27 November plenary session involving senior leaders from international organizations charged with the task of promoting corporate responsibility and responsible business, with business respect for human rights as a bedrock.
 
Background
The Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises clarify that all business enterprises have an independent responsibility to respect human rights, and that in order to do so they are required to exercise human rights due diligence to identify, prevent, mitigate and account for how they address impacts on human rights.
Human rights due diligence is a way for enterprises to proactively manage potential and actual adverse human rights impacts with which they are involved.
It involves multiple overlapping components, including (i) embedding responsible business conduct int policies and management systems; undertaking due diligence by (ii) Identifying and assessing actual or potential adverse human rights impacts that the enterprise may cause or contribute to through its own activities, or which may be directly linked to its operations, products or services by its business relationships; (iii) Integrating findings from impact assessments across relevant company processes and taking appropriate action according to its involvement in the impact; (iv) Tracking the effectiveness of measures and processes to address adverse human rights impacts in order to know if they are working; (v) Communicating on how impacts are being addressed and showing stakeholders – in particular affected stakeholders – that there are adequate policies and processes in place; and (vi) providing and supporting remediation as appropriate.
The prevention of adverse impacts on people is the main purpose of human rights due diligence. It concerns risks to people, not risks to business. It should be ongoing, as the risks to human rights may change over time; and be informed by meaningful stakeholder engagement, in particular with affected stakeholders, human rights defenders, trade unions and grassroots organizations. Risks to human rights defenders and other critical voices need to be considered.
Since 2011, corporate human rights due diligence has become a norm of expected conduct. It has been integrated in other policy frameworks for responsible business. The recent OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Business Conduct, adopted by 48 OECD and non-OECD countries at Ministerial level in May 2018, provides practical guidance on due diligence, including for managing human rights risks and impacts, alongside other concerns for responsible business conduct, such as anti-bribery, environment and employment and industrial relations. This Guidance was developed in close consultation with business, workers, and civil society, as well as the International Labour Organisation, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights. As such it seeks to promote a common global understanding among governments and stakeholders on due diligence for responsible business conduct.
The human rights due diligence standard is increasingly reflected in government policy frameworks and legislation, including mandatory disclosure of risks of modern slavery in supply chains, and sector specific due diligence obligations, for example on responsible mineral supply chains. In the 20 national action plans on business and human rights that have been issued to date, Governments have reaffirmed the expectation that business enterprises exercise human rights due diligence. A growing number of investors are starting to ask enterprises how they manage their risks to human rights. Also, among business lawyers there is a growing recognition that they should advise corporate clients to exercise human rights due diligence. In the world of sports, human rights due diligence processes have become an integral part of the selection process for mega sporting events. Among business enterprises, a small but growing number of large corporations in different sectors have issued policy statements expressing their commitment to respect human rights in line with the Guiding Principles and OECD Guidance. Several such enterprises are developing practices that involve ongoing learning and innovation around the various components of human rights due diligence.
However, while a small group of early adopters are showing the way and good practices are building up, considerable efforts are still needed, as the majority of enterprises around the world remain either unaware of their responsibility, or unable or unwilling to implement human rights due diligence as required of them in order to meet their responsibility to respect human rights. The fundamental challenge going forward is to scale up the good practices that are emerging and address remaining gaps and challenges. That will require concerted efforts by all actors. Evidence of what constitute some of the strongest drivers for changing business practice suggests that governments and investors have a key role to play. For Governments in particular, addressing and closing market and governance failures is an inherent part of their duties.

Interpretation is provided in Korean

Session organized by the Global Network Initiative.

Brief description of the session:
Please join the Global Network Initiative (GNI) for a discussion on "Understanding and Addressing Human Rights Impacts in the Information & Communication Technology (ICT) sector." There has been relatively little public guidance developed that is specific to the ICT-sector. The GNI Principles and Implementation Guidelines provide some guidance, and other guidance has been provided by the Institute for Human Rights and Business, as well as Business for Social Responsibility.

Key discussion questions:

• What are the key elements of HRDD in the ICT sector?
• What are the key differences between HRDD in the ICT sector and in other sectors (factories, extractives, security services, etc.)?
• What practical considerations facilitate and/or raise challenges for conducting HRDD in the ICT sector (in other words, lessons learned)?
• What concerns do users/civil society have about how HRDD in the tech sector?

Format of the session:
This session will be an open "roundtable" with the audience, facilitated by GNI's Independent Board Chair, Mark Stephens.

Brief description of the presentation:
The right to health, and the underlying access to medicine, is one of the obvious salient human rights in the pharmaceutical sector. However, pharmaceutical companies recognize that there are other salient human rights issues that need to be addressed when considering right-holders across the entire value chain, in their own operations and throughout their supply chains.

Presentation objectives:
This session will provide some insights into the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Initiative (PSCI) and how the member companies are collaborating to define, implement and champion responsible supply chain practices, including the respect for human rights.

Brief description of the presentation:
This snapshot presentation will discuss key elements of Samsung Electronics’ continuous journey on human rights due diligence, including practical experiences in aligning its business activities with the UN Guiding Principles.

Presentation objectives:
Samsung Electronics will share selected cases of the implementation of its commitment with regards to human rights due diligence, with examples from our global operations.

Description of the presentation:
The second pillar of the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights requires businesses to conduct human rights due diligence not only within its business activity but also for those with whom the business may be directly linked. To name a few, these are the contractors, transporters, and those within the supply chain and value chain.

Presentation objectives:
The presentation will cover the challenges faced in conducting human rights due diligence in the supply chain. Aditya Birla has initiated work towards human rights due diligence in the supply chain. Some practices followed to overcome the challenges will be presented.

http://webtv.un.org/meetings-events/human-rights-council/forum-on-business-and-human-rights/watch/plenary-ii-building-coherence-forum-on-business-and-human-rights-2018/5972065478001/?term=

Interpretation is provided in English, French, Spanish and Korean.

Under the title “Building coherence and reaching scale on human rights due diligence – International organizations' leadership perspectives”, the plenary convenes senior leaders from the UN and international organizations working to promote responsible business conduct and sustainability.
The high-level plenary provides an opportunity for signaling alignment of international standards and action to promote corporate respect for human rights, as well as for reinforcing the message that business respect for human rights must be at the heart of corporate contributions to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
A central aim is to signal alignment on the importance of corporate human rights due diligence to enable business enterprises meet their responsibility to respect human rights.

Brief description of the presentation :
The presentation will introduce how Keidanren, one of the main business organizations in Japan, plays an active role in leading Japanese corporations to respect human rights as well as to promote human rights due diligence (HRDD) in accordance with the UN Guiding Principle on Business and Human Rights.

Presentation objectives:
To explain Keidanren's Charter of Corporate Behavior and the concept of "Society 5.0 for SDGs".
The presentation will also share some data on how Japanese companies respect human rights and promote HRDD in their business.

Brief presentation of the presentation:
Sakhalin Energy will present the main challenges that a large project operator encounters when introducing and implementing human rights standards across supply chain partners, as well as the practical tools from the company’s experience allowing to address these challenges.

Presentation objectives:
The session will focus on thorough bidding process, human rights inclusive contract management, trainings/awareness raising for internal/external stakeholders, tools of contractors’ monitoring and audits.

Brief description of the presentation:
S Group is a Finnish consumer owned cooperative group operating in the supermarket, department store and hardware trade, service station store and fuel sales and the travel industry and hospitality business. Expectations on human rights due diligence of businesses are growing, while implementing supply chain due diligence practices can be very challenging in practice. S Group has explored existing practices and identified innovative tools and methods for practical implementation of human rights due diligence.

Presentation objectives: 
In this snapshot presentation, S Group will share its experience and showcase concept for in-depth human rights impact assessment. The human rights impact assessment concept was developed to strengthen supply chain due diligence and to gain information of the root causes of the human rights issues.

Brief description of the presentation:
UPM is committed to sustainable forest management and monitors the origin of wood to ensure it is sustainably and legally sourced. The presentation will describe human rights due diligence process in large supply base covering several sourcing categories, involving more than 25000 suppliers. It will also bring practical examples of risk assessment within chemicals sourcing.

Presentation objectives: 
The presentation will describe UPM's approach in managing human rights risk in supply chain. It will introduce a practical case on chemicals sourcing and elaborate on opportunities for further development.

Brief description of the presentation:
Outotec develops leading technologies and services for the sustainable use of Earth’s natural resources in the mining, metal, energy, and chemical industries. The presentation will provide an overview of how to manage the human rights risks in a global supply chain, focusing on the practices and challenges of a globally operating technology company.

Presentation objectives: 
The objective of the presentation is to describe the current practical ways of assessing supply chain risks and related approach adopted at Outotec. This includes finding the key assessment areas and managing the classification, assessment and audit process, and the related challenges.

Brief description of the presentation:
Neste is an important producer of renewable diesel and a refiner of high-quality oil products that enable customers to reduce their climate emissions. Neste’s approach on human rights due diligence is centered on activities to assess and identify the potential impacts on human rights of our various internal functions and business areas, including those that concerns sourcing. This is followed by actions to increase the preparedness of internal management systems to mitigate human rights risks.

Presentation objectives:
The presentation will shade light on the current activities aimed at, amongst others, improving Neste’s sourcing practices on due diligence that is strengthened with human rights criteria, coupled with capacity building and supplier engagements.

Interpretation is provided into Spanish and Korean.

Organized by the Global Business Initiative on Human Rights in collaboration with the Responsible Business Alliance

Brief description of the session:
This session will focus on how and why companies approach implementing human rights due diligence across their value chains to identify and address (in coordination and collaboration with others) systemic human rights impacts.
Participants will gain an opportunity to explore the complexity of value chains in today’s globalised economy, and how business practitioners map and seek to understand their company’s value chain. We will also examine how practitioners conduct human rights due diligence across vast and complex value chains – with an emphasis on opportunities to promote collaboration and communication across entities in the value chain to more efficiently identify and address adverse impacts. The session will incorporate emerging practice and perspectives from panellists and members of the ‘audience’. The session will conclude with observations as to what is needed to enhance and scale value chain due diligence.

Session objectives:
Through this session, we will seek to:

• Strengthen understanding of the complexity of today’s value chains and business relationships – and how this complexity impacts efforts to implement human rights due diligence.
• Explore how business practitioners are mapping and visualising their value chains, including key challenges and innovations.
• Share how companies across industries are working to enhance their due diligence in key parts of the value chain, including by strengthening communication and coordination.
• Identify practical opportunities to enhance and scale value chain due diligence going forwards.

Key discussion questions:

• How can business practitioners strengthen their (and stakeholders’) visibility of complex value chains?
• How are business practitioners (individually and collectively) working to identify and respond to human rights impacts across their companies’ value chains?

Session format:
This session will commence with a discussion amongst the speakers and the audience about the complexity of modern value chains. We will invite 2-3 companies from different industries to share, briefly, an overview of their companies’ value chains and discuss how this changes over time.
We will then explore the challenges companies confront when undertaking value chain due diligence (including that of prioritisation) through a series of mini-case studies. These case studies will offer participants insight into how companies in different industries are implementing human rights due diligence in various parts of their value chains – for example, to assess risks in specific business relationships (i.e. customers, JV partners, suppliers), sourcing decisions (i.e. particular components or raw materials) and production phases (i.e. manufacturing, processing, recycling). The session will not aim to be comprehensive, but rather to give participants a sense of innovative and less-visible aspects of companies’ efforts to identify and manage issues across their value chains. We will also discuss key tools available to companies to support these efforts.
Throughout the session, we will encourage active participation from the audience, and will ask business participants to come prepared to share their own insights and experiences.

Background to the discussion:
In today’s globalised economy, companies are under increasing pressure to identify and respond to adverse human rights impacts in their value chains. Value chains are extremely complex. Most companies have hundreds of customers, suppliers and other business partners – and these typically provide services to more than one industry sector. Major brands have been under particular pressure to ‘cascade’ expectations and standards ‘down’ their supply chains. Suppliers and other business-to-business companies are also increasingly expected to meet their customers’ standards, to be alert to human rights risks downstream – that is, impacts they may be involved in through their customers and clients. For most companies, undertaking human rights due diligence across the value chain will indeed require assessing a multitude of different types of business relationships, products and operations.
Companies working to respond to these pressures face additional challenges presented by the extensive nature of major global value chains, and the complexity and multi-faceted nature of the many business relationships within it. Knowing what the value chain ‘looks like’ is key to enabling robust approaches to identify and respond to adverse human rights impacts. But knowing is also only the start. Even with good visibility of entities within a company’s value chain, implementing effective human rights due diligence processes to identify and understand risks in the value chain requires companies to work together. It also requires the development of creative and smart strategies to navigate issues of scale and find efficiencies, the use of leverage as appropriate and the identification of appropriate ways to prioritise (where necessary).

Brief description of the presentation:
Konica Minolta Australia will present its experiences in implementing an extensive range of community engagement programs and championing a broad range of social justice issues, including advocating for an Australian Modern Slavery Act which would compel Australian companies above a specified revenue threshold to report annually to government on their initiatives to ensure their supply chains are free from modern slavery and other forms of human rights abuse. Among aspects covered, the presentation will share insights from building capability to manage human rights risks in the supply chain ahead of being compelled to by legislation. The presentation will feature experiences and the unintended positive outcomes around growth in staff engagement and enhanced commercial outcomes.

Presentation objectives:
Sharing experiences and the unintended positive outcomes around growth in staff engagement and enhanced commercial outcomes.

Brief description of the presentation:
The session will highlight the efforts made by the Thai Tuna Industry Association (TTIA) to turn the industry towards a human rights-based sustainable business within a short period of time.

Presentation objectives: 
The presentation will share insights from TTIA efforts of applying requirements for member companies to comply with TTIA policies, covering aspects related to food safety, sustainability and ethical labour practice. It will also address lessons from applying stakeholder engagement and third party audits approaches aimed at creating a sustainable fisheries sector in Thailand. The goal is highlight lessons learned that can be replicated and inspire others in the region and beyond.

Brief description of the presentation:
To advance the Sustainable Development Goals — adhering to the Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact, the ILO Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and taking into account their interlinkages and reinforcing effects — companies participating in the UN Global Compact Action Platform on Decent Work in Global Supply Chains are committing to 6 actions based on communication, transparency, engagement, leadership, collaboration, and accountability. As patron sponsor of the Action Platform, SAP Ariba will share its approach towards advancing these commitments. James Marland, SPA Ariba’s VP of Network Growth, will discuss how the company is taking innovative action to promote universal respect for human rights through its supply chain.

Presentation objectives:
The presentation will highlight how innovative tools and technological solutions can contribute to more effective human rights due diligence across supply chains. It will share cross-cutting solutions to accelerate efforts in realizing the rights of workers, their families and their communities, and it will showcase the value of peer learning, collaboration and multi-stakeholder partnerships through the UN Global Compact Action Platform.

Organized by Amnesty International, SOMO, Clean Clothes Campaign, Sherpa, OECD Watch, PODER, Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID), Global Witness

In this panel, community members from Tanzania and Mexico and workers from Pakistan impacted by corporate human rights abuses join human rights experts to explore the relationship between due diligence and remedy. Is facilitating remedy a part of a company’s due diligence responsibility? Should remedy be left to companies? What is the role of the state? Is a company’s failure to ensure remedy a failure of due diligence? Why is a guarantee of effective remedy essential to assure meaningful due diligence? How must remedy outcomes feedback to improve due diligence practices? What responsibility do investors have to undertake due diligence and ensure remedy, and what should their due diligence be?
Panellists analyse the problems arising from failures of due diligence and remedy through exploration of three case studies on corporate impacts: 

• Gold mining in Tanzania,
• Garment production in Pakistan, and
• Copper mining in Mexico.

Next, panellists propose policy solutions to strengthen the effectiveness of due diligence and remedy through the use of hard and soft law tools and improved investor due diligence.

Organized by the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights and the International Bar Association Legal Policy and Research Unit

Short description of the session: 
This session aims to be an open and constructive round table-style discussion with attendees.  Led by business lawyers and based on the practical obstacles to implementing respect for human rights and human rights due diligence into client advisory work this session will stimulate a discussion about creative and innovative solutions to scaling up human rights due diligence in client advisory work.
This session will identify current challenges across a number of key practice areas by drawing on business lawyers’ practical experience advising business on business and human rights issues. By connecting some of the findings in the recent UN Working Group Report to the UNGA on human rights due diligence to business lawyers' practical experience, this session will seek to move the discussion from what should be done, to why it is not happening and how things might change. Speakers have been chosen to focus on issues that come up across a range of legal practice areas, including corporate M&A transactions, large-scale project based transactions, international sanctions, board-level and corporate advisory, financial crimes, international arbitration and disputes and compliance.

Session objectives:
To draw out some of the findings in the recent report of the Working Group to the UN General Assembly on human rights due diligence (A/73/163), specifically how stakeholders, can contribute to the scaling up of effective human rights risk management and due diligence by:

• identifying why respect for human rights and HRDD is not more widely embedded into the standard business and legal practice?
• drawing on practitioners’ experience advising businesses to understand the practice-based challenges to more widespread implementation of respect for human rights and HRDD across legal practice areas and advisory work
• stimulating a practical discussion about how these obstacles can be overcome, if at all?

Key discussion questions:

• What are some of the key obstacles to embedding respect for human rights and HRDD within the work of business lawyers, focusing on specific areas of practice and advisory work?
• What needs to change? How?

Format of the session 
The session will be an interactive and conversational roundtable-style discussion. Following a brief introduction, the moderator will pose two to three questions to each speaker to elicit insight from their different perspectives. This will then transition into a broader conversation amongst the speakers and the audience, with attendees offering comments and posing questions.

Background to the discussion: 
Business lawyers are a key stakeholder group to engage if human rights due diligence is to be implemented more widely beyond a small group of early adopter. However, the recent report of the Working Group on human rights due diligence (A/73/163) highlights a number of challenges to embedding human rights due diligence into business practice related to the work of business lawyers citing a "reluctance or even pushback from traditionally oriented legal counsel, both in-house and external" and a "lack of integration of business and human rights into the core advisory services of corporate law firms".
At the same time, it identifies the great potential for business lawyers to integrate advice on human rights due diligence more widely as part of advisory services for clients and recommends that "law firms and bar associations integrate human rights risk management in line with the Guiding Principles as a core element of the role of business lawyers as "wise counselors". There is also a very strong emerging view within the legal profession that advice on human rights risk management forms a core component of providing legal and commercial advice to businesses.
Whilst a lot of positive developments have occurred within the legal profession since the adoption of the UNGP in 2011, a lot of work still needs to be done as the majority of businesses and their advisors around the world remain unaware, unable or unwilling to recognize a responsibility to respect human rights and implement human rights due diligence.
Creative and innovative solutions will only emerge if we are honest about what's not working in practice and why. This panel is made up of leading legal experts in this field who understand challenges in practice and who can provide recommendations for overcoming these obstacles.

Interpretation is provided into Spanish.

Session organized by the Responsible Business Alliance and The Consumer Goods Forum.

Brief description of the session:
According to International Labour Organization (ILO), approximately 24.9 million people worldwide are in conditions of forced labor. Supply chains include hundreds of thousands of workers who seek to make a better life for themselves and their families.
Many are subject to conditions that may contribute to forced labor, including high recruitment fees, personal debt, complicated recruitment practices, a lack of transparency about their eventual working conditions, and inadequate legal protections in the countries in which they work.
Guiding principles on forced labor are well-established, however, solutions tend to be fragmented across industries and geographies and only address certain aspects or specific points in a worker’s journey.  Due diligence on forced labor should be harmonized across multiple industries that share recruitment supply chain to drive labor market transformation through collective action.
This session will provide testimonials from companies across multiple sectors on how they address forced labor in their operations and supply chains.  It will review core process to operationalize supply chain due diligence on forced labor while exploring collective action needed with stakeholders to address the root causes of this issue.

Format of the discussion:
The session will be organized via a series of speaker remarks, expert interventions and multimedia content. Session moderators will bring to life the opportunities created by harmonizing obligations, policies, initiatives, and expectations to tackle this difficult issue.
To ground the session, we will use real world examples from companies across industries on the opportunities and challenges in devising solutions.  Speakers from civil society will bring perspectives on remediation, remedy and transparency.  Finally the broader topic will be explored by asking participants to consider how business can work collectively as well as with other stakeholders, to address root causes of forced labor.

Programme:
15:00 – 15:10  Introductory remarks and framing of issue
15:10 - 15:50   Part 1 – Business Responses
15:50 – 16:05  Part 2 – Stakeholder Perspectives
16:05-16:20     Part 3 – Question/Answer and way forward 

Interpretation is provided in English and Spanish

Brief description of the presentation: 
Determining whether companies cause, contribute, or are directly linked to rights violations is key to identifying their duties, as well as to shaping their response to potential or actual human rights impact. Nevertheless, this task can be challenging in scenarios where multiple sources of impact overlap, interact, and transform one another. Such is the case of the Suape Industrial Portuary Complex (Brazil): it concentrates over one hundred companies in a region inhabited by traditional communities, who report serious human rights violations stemming from the Complex’s expansion.

Presentation objectives:
The presentation will draw on the Suape case to discuss the many facets of complicity with human rights violations in complex environments.
 

Interpretation is provided in English and French.

Session organized by the  Alliance 8.7 Secretariat and its Action Group on Supply Chains.

Topic and focus of the session:
The challenge of ending child labour and forced labour remains formidable with 152 million children around the world in child labour and 25 million people in forced labour. A significant number of victims are working in supply chains.

As the leading global partnership to end child labour and forced labour, Alliance 8.7 will use its unique convening power to bring to the Forum testimonies from three countries and the OSCE. These will show how governments have joined forces with other partners (business membership and employers’ organizations, trade unions, companies, civil society organizations, UN organizations and entities) to strengthen due diligence and the coordination of their efforts.

Session objectives:

1. Share good experiences of Governments and businesses collaboration on the implementation of measures aimed at incentivizing or enabling businesses to engage in due diligence on child labour and forced labour in supply chains;
2. Exchange insights on persisting challenges to be addressed, including on closing knowledge gaps and measuring impact of efforts;
3. Provide examples on how Alliance 8.7 can accelerate the results of their efforts under the 2030 Agenda. 

Format of the session:
Introductory statements followed by interactive dialogue with the audience

http://webtv.un.org/meetings-events/human-rights-council/forum-on-business-and-human-rights/watch/panel-on-lessons-from-legal-developments-forum-on-business-and-human-rights-2018/5972507124001/?term=

Organized by Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, Conectas Human Rights and Frank Bold

Short description of the session:
Recently, the EU and a range of countries around the world have adopted or started to consider legislation that requires businesses to either address or communicate how they address human rights impacts. This includes for example the Brazilian “dirty list” of slave labor, EU Non-financial Reporting Directive, the French Duty of Vigilance law, the UK Modern Slavery Act, and the Responsible Business Conduct bill currently discussed in the Swiss Parliament. These initiatives differ in purpose, human rights risks addressed, and type of legal obligations, but they all utilise the concept of Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD).
This session will take stock of the experience with these developments, with a focus on their outcomes, impacts on corporate accountability, and implementation by companies in order to draw lessons for further legislative developments.

Session objectives:

1. Summarise lessons from implementation of HRDD requirements by companies.
2. Clarify what are effective means of ensuring HRDD by regulation and necessary elements of such regulation.
3. Identify key information on the conduct of HRDD that should be disclosed.

Key discussion questions:

1. How are companies implementing HRDD regulations? What is feasible and what is best practice?
2. What are the lessons for designing effective legislative framework to incentivise companies to respect human rights effectively?

Format of the session:
After the initial remarks, the audience will be dived in groups and asked to agree on a reflection not longer than 1 minute that will be subsequently presented. Moderator will facilitate these reflections and quick reactions by the panel. This process will be followed by discussion with audience. At the end of the session, speakers and the moderator will summarize their main ideas.

1. Kick-off remarks (30 mins): Experience with implementation of HRDD regulations & lessons for legislative design
2. Discussions and reflections by audience in groups (15 mins)
3. Feedback from groups and discussion in plenary (30 mins)
4. Concluding remarks (10 mins)

Background to the discussion
This session will discuss experience with the implementation of three legislative strategies adopted by different countries that aim to improve corporate responsibility to respect human rights.
Brazilian regulation establishes that the Labour Ministry shall periodically disclose a list with information on the employers found using slave labour – the so-called “dirty list”. The regulation does not impose due diligence obligations. However, financial institutions, voluntarily, consider it in their decisions to extend credit, pressing companies to adopt higher supply chain monitoring and screening standards.
The EU Nonfinancial Reporting Directive (NFRD) and UK Modern Slavery Act (MSA) require certain companies to disclose information about their human rights due diligence. NFRD requires  companies to disclose their human rights policies and risks roughly in line with the definition in the UN Guiding Principles, while UK MSA requires companies to produce a statement setting out the steps they are taking to address slavery in their operations and supply chains. Business & Human Rights Resource Centre and its partners created an open central registry to host modern slavery statements. The analysis of these statements indicates that there is still a long way to go to achieve good reporting. The session will also present first findings about the quality of companies’ disclosure pursuant to the NFRD carried out by the Alliance for Corporate Transparency.
The French duty of vigilance law requires large companies to develop and disclose a plan that identifies and addresses human rights and environmental impacts including in the activities of their subsidiaries and established suppliers. The law also stipulates that this new obligation establishes a duty of care owed to the victims of violations that an adequate vigilance plan could effectively prevent or mitigate. Similar legislation is currently being considered by the Swiss Parliament in response to the successful public initiative.

 
Brief description of the session:
This session will explore how companies, governments, international NGOs, and local NGOs are working together to translate standards such as the UN Guiding Principles and Sustainable Development Goals into actual practices as they source food and beverage ingredients in complex and difficult contexts. Despite the flood of policies and initiatives that have launched, practices and procedures used to grow and fish many ingredients remain difficult to assess, and some initiative are clearly not going to meet their stated goals. The persistence of human rights violations pose distinct risks to corporations and governments and impacts on rights holders.
A variety of innovative tools and strategies are being developed to help stakeholders implement policies and commitments to the fields and oceans where the ingredients for global food and beverages are harvested and caught. This session will explore the complexities of conducting due diligence on complex and diverse supply chains in a variety of difficult contexts, investigate solutions that have worked, and review new tools that have been created.

Session Objectives:
This session will elicit a variety of strategies for governments, multinational corporations, civil society organizations, and local communities to fulfill their roles and responsibilities to “protect, respect and provide remedy” to affected populations (including migrant workers and women); to identify where current efforts are falling short; and how best to fill the remaining gaps. Special attention will be paid to the roles of human slavery, gender impacts and land rights in the global food and beverage supply chains and new tools that can be used to detect and remedy these abuses.

Key Discussion Questions

• Which corporate compliance systems and government practices have been successful and what additional mechanisms are needed to improve businesses’ obligations and countries’ enforcement with respect human rights in this sector?
• What are the relative roles of companies, governments, and civil society in meeting best standards?
• What are the emerging best practices to provide impacted communities and victims access to judicial and non-judicial remedy, including examples of meaningful, direct participation of workers and communities?
• What tools are available to help stakeholders assess human rights risks in their supply chains?
• What are the existing gaps in policy, enforcement, and services provided related to the responsible sourcing of food and beverage ingredients?

Format of the Session:
Roundtable discussion led by two moderators. Selected speakers will serve as pop-up commenters to offer their insights and guidance for no more than five minutes. Audience participation will figure prominently in the session.

Background to the Discussion:
How do you get from international standards and best practices on paper to measurable results and operable safeguards in the field? This has become the most critical question for practitioners as stakeholders try to move from the “why” of prioritizing human rights in corporate supply chains to the “how” to conduct meaningful due diligence in corporate value chains.
Many companies have launched corporate commitments and supply chain policies regarding human rights. But many are struggling to understand how to implement these policies in very diverse contexts around the globe where corporate best practices may come up against resource constraints, weak governance structures, adverse local customs, internal corporate resistance, and a variety of other potential hurdles.
This panel tackles how companies, international NGOs, and local NGOs are working together to translate standards such as the UN Guiding Principles and Sustainable Development goals into actual practices in the face of these challenges. While there are no silver bullets to circumvent the hard work of implementation in situ, companies and NGOs are learning important lessons about what it takes to turn good intentions in to concrete actions.
This roundtable discussion will focus on the food and beverage industry, where the need for corporate action has never been more acute. Global Witness’s review of 2017 killings of land and environment defenders found that the agri-business sector is now the leading sector in which killings occur, surpassing extractives. Conflicts over land and practices that bond fisherfolk and agricultural laborers to their boat captains or landholders are still prevalent in many countries despite corporate vows to end these practices.  Women often experience unique labor and land violations.
The discussion will focus on tangible practices and tools now available to help companies and stakeholders implement meaningful due diligence to detect and end such practices.

Organized by IPIECA

Short description of the session:
The session will focus the implementation of human rights due diligence in the oil and gas sector. The aim will be to discuss the challenges of human rights due diligence implementation, and the practical solutions to such challenges, in four particular areas relevant to the sector: community engagement, worker rights, responsible security, and supply chain.
It will use IPIECA’s practical guidance on this topic as a structure for the session, aligning with its four sections:

• What is a human rights due diligence process?
• Why is a human rights due diligence process important?
• Developing and implementing a human rights due diligence process
• Resources to support oil and gas companies

It will be an opportunity to generate discussion with attendees and encourage good practice sharing and examples of effective human rights due diligence.

Session objectives:
To further understanding of the good practices of companies engaging in human rights due diligence, in line with the UN Guiding Principles, in their operations, sub contracted activities and supply chains.
Raise awareness and debate some of the implementation challenges faced by the oil and gas sector in relation to human rights due diligence and brainstorm possible solutions to such challenges.
Promote the industry initiative on human rights in the supply chain recently launched at the UN Global Compact in September – a joint initiative between BP, Shell, Total & Equinor.
Use the feedback in the room as an opportunity to develop an updated version of IPIECA’s 2012 guidance on Human rights due diligence process.

Key discussion questions:

• What are the possible solutions to some of the challenges for implementing human rights due diligence measures in the areas of community engagement, worker rights, responsible security, and supply chain?
• How can we measure the effectiveness of human rights due diligence solutions?

Format of the session:
The session is designed to be as interactive as possible. It will begin with brief introductory remarks to set the context of human rights due diligence in the oil and gas sector, and IPIECA’s work to date in this area. We will highlight IPIECA’s guidance on Human rights due diligence process, as well as our current project on Company and Supply Chain Labour Rights (to be launched soon). It will also introduce the new industry initiative on human rights in the supply chain - joint initiative between BP, Shell, Total & Equinor - recently launched at the UN Global Compact in September.
Next, our four moderators will briefly highlight challenges to effective human rights due diligence for the sector related to four key areas:

• Community engagement
• Worker rights
• Responsible security
• Supply chain

We will then divide into four breakout groups, each with a moderator and an IPIECA member company representative, to discuss the topic from these perspectives. Each group will be tasked with discussing possible solutions to the challenges raised.
This will be followed by an opportunity to provide feedback in plenary, sum up overall themes and findings, and Q&A.

Background to the discussion:
IPIECA has been working on, and raising awareness of, human rights issues across the oil and gas industry for over a decade. As a consensus-based membership organization, IPIECA facilitates peer learning, provides authoritative guidance on implementation of business and human rights frameworks, such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), and facilitates the development, sharing and promotion of good practices for the industry. A key expectation of the UNGPs is that companies will work with their business partners, including suppliers, to set expectations and use leverage to seek improved human rights performance. As such IPIECA’s human rights programme is expanding beyond direct member human rights impacts, to examine how members can work with, and seek to influence, business partners to respect human rights.
IPIECA’s Business and Human Rights Project has included developing practical guidance on due diligence and community grievance mechanisms that have been widely used throughout the oil and gas industry.
The next phase of IPIECA’s work in this area, is focusing on respect for human rights in the supply chain, initially concentrating on the contracted workforce that the industry relies on to develop and operate its large-scale operations. This is an area of common saliency across the oil and gas industry, and one in which IPIECA members can benefit from peer learning and sharing of good practices. In the face of increasing external scrutiny of labour practices in the supply chain, IPIECA aims to inform stakeholders, of our industry’s collective commitment and efforts to respect labour rights.  It also helps member companies to anticipate emerging trends and challenges for our industry.  Most importantly the project will enable members to more effectively identify, prevent and mitigate labour rights risks and impacts within projects, operations and supply chains.  This will be achieved through the development of practical tools, supported by implementation guidance.

Interpretation is available in Korean.

Interpretation is provided in English, French, Spanish and Korean.


Organized by Ethical Trading Initiative

Brief description
This session would facilitate multi-stakeholder dialogue and lesson-sharing on how to engage with vulnerable workers engaging in precarious work in international supply chains, and how to integrate them into corporate human rights due diligence approaches.
Insights will be provided by:

• a leading international trade union representative working to support exploited workers and victims of trafficking;
• a leading multinational company representative who will speak about engaging with migrant workers in the Italian tomato sector;
• a leading researcher and lawyer specialising in business and human rights; and
• a multi-stakeholder initiative representative working with companies, trade unions and civil society organisations on mitigating risks in complex international supply chains.

Session objectives

• Insights into specific approaches to engaging vulnerable workers, adopted by companies, unions, CSOs and researchers.
• A focus on engaging with vulnerable workers who face specific types of challenges such as payment of recruitment fees and lack of representation.
• An improved understanding of different techniques of safeguarding; working to ensure that people seeking to enforce their rights (and also their representatives and whistleblowers) are protected from threats of intimidation, harassment and reprisals.

Key discussion questions

• How should companies work to integrate the rights and needs of vulnerable workers through direct engagment whilst ensuring safeguarding?
• How can businesses mitigate the rise of vulnerable employment in international supply chains through Human rights due diligence?

Format of the session

• Audience participants to pose brief questions to speakers at the outset to frame later discussion.
• Reflections from speakers on their approaches to engagement and safeguarding.
• Interactive engagement with audience on recommended approaches and identfying blockages to effective HRDD with workers in global value chains.

Background to the discussion
Worldwide, around 1.4 billion workers, most of them women, are in insecure jobs or in the informal sector. Supply chains continue to be one of the most important levers for business to create positive impact in the world, with an estimated 80% of global trade passing through them annually. However, in too many places, workers are denied basic human rights, and migrant workers continue to be exploited.

In the drive to bring ever more products to market, people are often seen merely as a commodity, with wages pushed down to cut costs. A lack of formal, independent worker representation fuels and exacerbates the problem. If workers do not have access to workplace rights and protections within supplier companies, nothing changes.

Companies that commit to genuine and effective human rights due diligence processes can both mitigate risks to worker’s rights, but also significantly improve the lives of workers by providing decent work.

Engagement with workers is an essential part of corporate human rights due diligence. Social dialogue is about establishing formal or informal processes that enable workers and employers to negotiate or consult collectively on issues concerning their rights and responsibilities and to resolve conflicts peacefully and effectively.

A growing number of examples show that effective social dialogue between workers on the ‘shop floor’ and managers can contribute to decent work, quality jobs, greater equality and inclusive growth – all of which benefit workers and companies alike.

This session will explore how businesses, trade unions and other organisations are engaging with vulnerable workers in Italy, Spain, Southern Africa and elsewhere, and how they go about attempting to ensure that people seeking to enforce their rights are protected from threats of intimidation or reprisals.

Interpretation is provided into English , French and Spanish

This Forum session led by the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights will address new ways to strengthen corporate respect for human rights in conflict and post-conflict contexts. It is part of the consultation process for a Working Group project that will lead to recommendations to governments and business enterprises in a report to the UN Human Rights Council in 2020.

The project will address implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in all stages of conflict, from prevention to post-conflict, including transitional justice. It will cover all three pillars of the Guiding Principles:
- the State duty to protect against business-related human rights abuse
- the corporate responsibility to respect human rights
- the need for access to remedy for victims of business-related human rights abuse

http://webtv.un.org/meetings-events/human-rights-council/forum-on-business-and-human-rights/watch/panel-on-driving-better-better-due-diligence-forum-on-business-and-human-rights-2018/5972544710001/?term=

Organized by the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB)

Description:
This round-table session is part of a human rights due diligence (HRDD) track, which focuses on the roles of benchmarks, rating agencies and ESG researchers can, or are, having in driving improvements in human rights due diligence conducted by companies. Drawing on a round-table of speakers, the session will set out how different approaches are able to create impact and where further efforts need to be made. The second half of the session will focus on interaction with the audience, who will be invited to dig into the detail and challenge the speakers on their assertions.

Objectives:

• To explain how benchmarks (e.g. the CHRB), ESG Researchers and Ratings (e.g. the Modern Slavery Registry and Vigeo-Eiris) and stock markets can interact and put pressure on companies to implement the UNGPs, specifically their responsibility to implement human rights due diligence and what they are seeing.
• To understand where there are blockers to progress and where more effort should be directed, in order to maximise the impact of the current levers of power.

Key Discussion Questions:
The discussion questions are planned to be asked to some (if not all) the participants each time, to elicit a short response. The questions will also be tailored / linked to a similar question which will be posed to the audience who will be asked to vote and respond with questions of their own that will be fed to a relevant participant.

• What is your organisation’s role in pushing HRDD and what trends are you seeing? 2-minute answers only. This will be supported by audience interaction, asking the audience to vote Yes/No on whether they think companies have improved their HRDD, whether the levers of change can generate sufficient progress etc.
• Do you think more pressure should be applied to investors, or the companies they invest in, in order to drive better HRDD and outcomes for people? 2-minute answers. Again, the audience can vote for one side or the other.
• Is the current focus on the SDGs, including ranking companies by their contributions to the SDGs, likely to result in better HRDD within companies, or to distract from it? 2 minute answers. 

Format:

• Introduction, scene setting and ground rules (5 mins, including potential late start)
• Responses of Round-table Participants to key question 1 (15 mins)
• Audience interaction and 2 questions max (8 mins)
• Responses of Round-table Participants to key question 2 (10 mins)
• Audience interaction and 2 questions max (8 mins)
• Responses of Round-table Participants to key question 3 (10 mins)
• Audience interaction and 2 questions max (8 mins)
• Free questions and audience interaction (11 mins)
• Closeout (5 mins)

Background to the Discussion
Companies have a responsibility to implement the UNGPs and to conduct adequate human rights due diligence (HRDD). But in often weak legislative environments, the pressures on companies to conduct and report on their HRDD may be insufficient to ensure this actually happens. In these cases, there are multiple levers of change that can be used to create an environment where HRDD happens alongside, or in-spite of (rather than because of), regulation.
ESG research data and ratings, public benchmarks and stock exchanges all form part of the information ecosystem that is a critical component of these levers of change and without which, people can not make informed choices. They are also interconnected and are part of the wider feedback loops that connect businesses with investors, data providers, governments, civil society and humanity at large.
This session will look into the current state of play, to see what companies are doing, whether they are improving and what ways can they be pushed to improve their human rights due diligence, by looking at the roles of benchmarking, ratings, ESG research and stock exchanges.

Interpretation is provided in English, French and Spanish.

Organized by NomoGaia, BSR and the Danish Institute for Human Rights

Brief description of the session:
Community engagement in HRIA focuses on 'rightsholders' - the individuals whose human rights are likely to be affected by an operation. Identifying and engaging with rightsholders requires trust building in all contexts. However, trust is harder to obtain and the costs of failure are steeper with particularly vulnerable populations.
 
This session considers good practice in rightsholder engagement in sensitive contexts, building on the experiences of affected rightsholders to both validate and challenge the practices of even leading companies. A rightsholder, scholar, practitioner and company viewpoint will be probed during the round-table session.

Session objectives:

• Draw out consensus on what constitutes good practice in rightsholder engagement
• Delve into the barriers for best practice resulting from community distrust, ongoing state repression, lack of corporate expertise/leverage, social marginalization, etc

Key discussion questions:
What should corporate actors to do differently to ensure their community engagement is meaningful with vulnerable rightsholder groups in challenging contexts?
What can they do if the initial approach is not successful?

Format of the session:
This roundtable discussion will start with brief descriptions of rightsholder engagement processes at HRIAs for companies ENI and Diageo. Then the practitioners supporting those HRIAs will describe challenges and successes in rightsholder engagement, followed by analytical questioning from the researcher/scholar perspective. A roundtable discussion session will follow, before an audience-driven Q&A is integrated.

Background to the discussion
This discussion draws on the unique experiences of  rightholders as well as speakers who have either engaged directly with affected rightsholders in fragile contexts or who have conducted thorough scholarship on meaningful HRDD. It aims to tackle complex questions of how to connect with rightsholders who are reluctant to be critical or express personal opinions, fearing state (or other) retribution. It challenges the assumption that rightsholders are eager to engage with companies or are prepared to discuss the effects of corporate activities on their lives, and it examines ways to overcome such barriers. It considers the possibility that companies might initially struggle to meaningfully engage rightsholders but can create long-term approaches to build trust.

Session organized  by the Principles for Responsible Investment.

Brief description of the session:
In 2011, the UN Human Rights Council unanimously endorsed the UN Guiding Principles on Business in Human Rights (UNGPs), offering an international point of reference on how states should protect, and companies should respect, human rights. Moreover, the OECD, has integrated the UNGPs in its own policy frameworks, such as OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and the OECD Responsible Business Conduct for Institutional Investors.
Investors and businesses have responsibilities to respect human rights and should act with due diligence in line with the UNGPs and the OECD guidelines. However, despite the growing awareness and commitments by both investors and businesses regarding this responsibility, a recent report by the UN Working Group on business and human rights found that the “majority of companies do not demonstrate practices that meet the requirements set by the guiding principles,” and calls on investors to “more systematically require effective human rights due diligence by the companies they invest in.”
Investors are increasingly aware and concerned about the significant potential and actual operational, legal and reputational risks companies might face when they do not take adequate steps to manage human rights risks. These could include project delays and cancellations, lawsuits and significant fines and negative press coverage and reputational damage.
Investors can play an important role by proactively engaging with companies on developing policies and processes that can prevent and mitigate adverse human rights impacts, rather than only reacting to them once they have occurred.

Session objectives:
This session will explore how investors can engage portfolio companies, as well as with rights-holders and other local stakeholders, on human rights risks to promote the uptake of human rights due diligence and access to remedy for victims of adverse impacts.

Session organized by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)

Brief description of the session:
The ITUC will hold a panel discussion during the 2018 UN Forum on Business and Human Rights on conducting due diligence with respect to freedom of association, and engaging with trade unions in conducting due diligence, including with regard to remedy.
The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) make it clear that the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, at a minimum, covers the rights set forth in the International Bill of Human Rights and the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. These instruments include the rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining, meaning that companies have a responsibility to conduct due diligence to “know and show” that they respect these rights.
In addition, to conducting due diligence on the rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining, companies should engage with trade unions as stakeholders throughout the entire due diligence process. The newly adopted OECD Due Diligence Guidance on Responsible Business Conduct provides practical examples of such engagement, including company-trade union agreements. The OECD guidance also recognises that industrial relations is a form of stakeholder engagement. Moreover, following its most recent update in 2017, the ILO MNE Declaration now highlights the central role of freedom of association and collective bargaining in the due diligence process.
Despite positive developments in the governance framework, in practice the right to freedom of association continues to be misunderstood, and even opposed. Indeed, far from being considered part of due diligence, industrial relations are generally considered as separate, with good practices with respect to due diligence on freedom of association on the one hand, and engagement with trade unions on the other, being rare in the business and human rights discourse.

Session objectives:
Such a panel discussion would therefore be critical in allowing the ITUC to:

• Raise awareness of the types of actions by companies that may lead to adverse impacts on the right to freedom of association;
• Identify practical steps that companies can take to conduct due diligence on freedom of association;
• Discuss effective approaches to meaningful engagement with trade unions, and identify their enabling factors.

Key discussion questions:

• What practical actions does the new OECD Due Diligence Guidance recommend with regard to conducting due diligence on freedom of association and engaging trade unions in conducting due diligence?
•  What are the most prevalent abuses of the right to freedom of association in the Korean metal sector?
•  What are the practical steps that a company should take to conduct effective due diligence on respect for the right of freedom of association?
•  What does successful company-trade union collaboration look like in practice?

Organized by Hermes Equity Ownership Services and DLA Piper

Short description of the session: 
This session will focus on what has been working, what is not working and where efforts are falling short by illustrating key practical challenges to effective human rights risk management and uptake of HRDD. By providing insights from investors, advisors and industry groups we will highlight practice based challenges related to a lack of traceability/transparency in a supply chain and across a corporate groups, which make human rights risks, bribery and corruption, money laundering, labour exploitation and related risks to people difficult to identify, prevent or manage.
Distributed ledger technology and responsible sourcing solutions providers, Everledger and RCS Global will share their experience working with a range of companies to develop practical solutions to increase transparency and improve human rights due diligence and risk management throughout supply chains, for example, blockchain innovations used to improve data collected along minerals and metals supply chains, which complement existing top down third party audit approach with bottom up data push by data generated by miners and other stakeholders related to human rights and related risks.
With this practice-based foundation, the session will then seek to draw in stakeholders' perspectives from the audience to collect insights and the experience of civil society, academics, businesses and other stakeholder groups in managing these issues to identify was to scale up the implementation of human rights due diligence in supply chains and corporate groups using emerging technology solutions, whilst also ensure that reducing risks to people is embedded into the development of these emerging solutions.

Session objectives:
Emerging technology does not provide a complete solution to the challenge of scaling up HRDD but it is an important piece to the puzzle by plugging gaps in current approaches, complementing existing processes and identifying new ways to identify and manage risks. This session has two key objectives:

• Stimulate a discussion about the practical utility of emerging technology in supporting businesses reduce risks to people based on lessons from practice, as well as the key discussion questions that remain to be answered; and
• Collect views of civil society, academics, businesses and other stakeholders on how to enhance these efforts and plug remaining gaps to move HRDD beyond the largest, first mover businesses. These contributions will be published following the session with a view to scaling up HRDD through the use of emerging technology.

Key discussion questions: 

• What is not working and where efforts are falling short to implement effective human rights due diligence and risk management - insights from investors, advisors and industry groups on practice-based challenges related to a lack of traceability/transparency through supply chains and across corporate groups that mean human rights risks, ABC, AML, labour risks are difficult to identify and prevent or manage;
• How emerging technology solutions like distributed ledger technology can address some of these challenges; and
• What gaps remain in utilising technology to enhance HRDD and ensure businesses are able to reduce risks to people

Format of the session:
The moderator will guide an interactive discussion by opening with  short contributions on the practical challenges in implementing corporate HRDD and further ideas from speakers' own experience related to the use of technology and blockchain to address human rights risks in supply chains. The discussion will then focus on collecting contributions from civil society, academics, businesses and additional stakeholder groups on the topics and issues raised, which will be captured and released in the form of a summary after the panel and as contributions to a discussion paper that the session organizers are developing.

Background to the discussion: 
Practical challenges in managing complex global supply chains make corporate human rights due diligence efforts challenging, for instance, when a business comprises of a large groups of companies the DD that is increasingly expected is onerous (resources and cost) and often difficult to do effectively; methods of identifying risks down the supply chain have their shortcomings which mean risks aren't adequately identified and managed e.g. social/third party audits.
Recently, technological innovations have begun to transforming the way businesses increase transparency, manage risks and create value. Distributed Ledger Technology ("DLT"), commonly known as blockchain technology, is behind a wave of innovation that has the potential to revolutionise the way global businesses operate across a range of sectors.
This session will provide civil society, academic, business and government stakeholders to contribute stakeholders consultations looking at how emerging technologies can support supply chain human rights risk management to be included in a discussion paper being drafted that will seek to outline some of the potential opportunities and challenges presented by DLT to manage human rights and responsible business conduct risks in supply chains and increase transparency.

http://webtv.un.org/meetings-events/human-rights-council/forum-on-business-and-human-rights/watch/panel-on-what-works-forum-on-business-and-human-rights-2018/5972625383001/?term=

Organized by SHIFT

Description:
For years, many - within business and beyond - have deployed vast efforts and resources to embed respect for human rights in companies’ operations and value chains. But not all business actions make a difference and deliver meaningful outcomes for affected rights-holders - and even the best intended ones can have little to no effect. Some may even harm people, instead of mitigating risk.
Participants will be invited to share their own experience and viewpoints with reference to a number of responsible business interventions. We will also benefit from inputs from practitioners about innovations and insights into both purchasing practices in the apparel industry, and mining company impacts on, and relationships with, communities. 
This session will engage participants in the discipline of working with both leading and lagging indicators to evaluate business respect for human rights. Lagging indicators are about harm that has already occurred. They measure adverse outcomes–what went wrong or has improved after the fact. Leading indicators are the ‘canaries in the coal mine’ that predict harm. They enable companies to fix the causes of harm before it happens.

Objectives:
The objective of the session is to identify what the opportunities and challenges are of working with leading and lagging indicators when evaluating business respect for human rights

Key discussion questions:
With reference to a few specific business and human rights challenges, the session will explore the following questions:

• What views/insight do participants have about which actions to mitigate adverse human rights impacts make a difference to the lives of affected people?
• What can we learn from existing innovations to identify - and build an evidence base around - which actions do in fact make a difference?
• When making judgments about whether a company’s due diligence is, or is likely, to make a difference to affected people, what do participants think is most important to pay attention to?

Format:
The session will alternate between audience input/participation and contributions from practitioners about innovations and challenges in evaluating what works.

Background to the discussion:
The challenge facing all stakeholders is to do a better job at evaluating what is working and to develop and use the most meaningful information and indicators to track progress. This clearly involves moving beyond tracking inputs and activities, or focusing on high profile incidents of harm or good practice.
Without proper insights into what is working in practice, company leaders cannot allocate proper insights into what is working in practice, company leaders cannot allocate resources to the programs and policies that actually shift business behaviors and make a difference to people’s lives. Many investors feel blindfolded when trying to pick out socially responsible companies from the rest. And civil society organizations have to rely on often meaningless or superficial data, that focus on actions divorced from results, to measure human rights performance.
Most importantly, not getting a handle on what actions actually make a difference betrays the very individuals and communities that the business and human rights community purports to be focused on.

Brief description of the session:
Workers around the world find themselves in the midst of a public health crisis due to their exposure to hazardous substances at work. This session will look into the electronics industry as an example of such crisis and explore ways to overcome the challenge of workers’ exposure to hazardous substances as it remains poorly addressed. Furthermore, the exposure of workers to toxic substances can and should be considered a form of exploitation. States, business actors and international organizations can eliminate or minimize exposures and must do so with urgency. This session aims to pave the way forward for the different actors involved to achieve the protection of workers from exposure to toxic chemicals.


Session objectives:

• Discuss exposure of workers to toxic substances as a form of exploitation and global multi-stakeholder challenge.
• Urge States to protect, respect and fulfill the human rights of workers, including access to effective remedies when they have been infringed by their occupational exposures to toxic and otherwise hazardous substances.
• Urge business enterprises to take their full responsibilities and implement human rights due diligence processes to prevent and address exposure of workers in the supply chain and support access to effective remedies in case of infringements.
• Discuss transparency and right to information as a key element of the way forward.

Key discussion questions:

• How to address the lack of meaningful health and safety information provided to workers?
• What does the right to information means for a worker and their representatives when it comes to preventing exposure? What is the workers right to know?
• What are industry initiatives to prevent exposure?
• How can employers make information available and accessible to workers about various facets of their actual or potential exposure to toxic chemicals?
• What should this information include as a minimum?
• What is the responsibility of the Chemicals sector to respect human rights under the UNGP?

Format of the session:
Roundtable Discussion format
Introduction remarks by the Special Rapporteur
Followed by streaming a trailer from a compelling new video about victims of chemical exposure which shows the challenges in prevention and access to remedy.
Kick-off speakers will represent different challenges and initiatives
Open discussion facilitated by moderator
Closing Remarks

Background to the discussion:
Despite clear obligations relating to the protection of workers’ health, workers around the world find themselves in the midst of a public health crisis due to their exposures to hazardous substances at work. It is estimated that one worker dies every 15 seconds from toxic exposures at work, while over 2,780,000 workers globally die from unsafe or unhealthy conditions at work each year. The electronics industry is no exception. Electronics has become one of the largest sectors in the global economy, employing tens of millions of workers. One the main challenges of the sector is that it is chemically intensive, putting these workers at serious risk of chemical exposure and toxic-related occupational illness. Over the past several decades, numerous cases have emerged of workers poisoned by toxic chemicals in the lifecycle of electronics.

Taking the electronics industry as an example, this session will focus in highlighting States’ duties and businesses’ responsibilities in protecting and respecting the rights of workers implicated by toxic occupational exposures. It will discuss the importance of worker’s right to know, and explore the relationship between due diligence and the protection of workers. Current initiatives from civil society, industry coalitions and multi-stakeholder groups will be discussed. The Special Rapporteur on toxics will outline several causes that give rise to the exploitation of workers, and offer 15 Principles to help States, businesses and other key actors ensure decent work for all. Finally, the session will urge all stakeholders to eliminate workers’ exposure and propose relevant actions.

https://goodelectronics.org/exploitation-by-deception-in-the-electronics-industry/

Watch live: https://unog.webex.com/unog/j.php?MTID=mf6b05920d7c070651dac2f7c78e53b64 


Brief description the session:
The session will bring together different stakeholders, including representatives from regional organizations, civil society, business sector and governments, to discuss the challenges of implementing effective human rights due diligence in the commodity trading sector. This discussion will also serve to identify good practice to put respect for human rights into practice and brainstorm on potential solutions for its scale-up in the commodity trading sector.
The session will also briefly discuss the process of elaborating a guidance on implementing the UNGPs in the commodity trading sector, developed by the Swiss Government.

Session objectives:

• Highlight challenges when implementing corporate human rights due diligence in commodity trading sector.
• Unpack the different parameters of the concept of human rights due diligence for the commodity trading sector.
• Identify good practices in this sector and potential solutions to address gaps.
• Present the guidance document elaborated by the concerned stakeholder group in Switzerland.

Key discussion questions:

• What are the peculiarities of commodity trading that make a specific approach necessary for undertaking human rights due diligence processes that are consistent with the UNGPs?
• In which ways does the diversity of the commodity trading sector create challenges in implementing the UNGPs?
• How should the Swiss government and other stakeholders support and ensure companies when implementing the guidance, given its legally non-binding nature?

Format of the session:
The opening presentation will offer a brief overview of the main goals, format and content of the sector guidance for commodity trading. This will be followed by a moderated conversation among industry and civil society stakeholders which have participated in drafting the guidance document. A representative from the OECD will also give his view on the guidance and its implementation. A representative of the Swiss government will underline expectations about the implementation of the UNGPs by the commodity trading sector. The moderator will then facilitate questions from participants.

Background to the discussion:
Determining the human rights impacts associated with the commodity trading sector is challenging, given for example the diversity of the sector, the complex and varied supply chains associated with specific commodities. Switzerland is one of the world’s most important commodity trading hubs. The commodity trading sector is characterized by a diverse mix of companies in terms of size, ownership, turnover and commodities traded. Questions are increasingly being raised relating to the responsibilities of trading companies on human rights, and related issues, such as corruption and environmental degradation. The Swiss Government has facilitated the creation of a multistakeholder group composed of representatives of the commodity trading sector, civil society and government. This group has supported the elaboration of the sector guidance for the commodity trading sector on implementation of the UNGPs. The guidance document is aligned with the Due Diligence Guidance elaborated by the OECD. It has been drafted by the Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB).

Organized by International Tourism Partnership (ITP) and ECPAT International (ECPAT)

Short description the session:
The session will explore human rights risks and related trends in the tourism and travel sector. Session speakers will provide insights on how they engage on human rights issues, with a focus on human trafficking, forced labour and the sexual exploitation of children. The session will also focus on the value of collaboration and discuss industry-wide solutions currently implemented globally to address human rights risks.

Session objectives:

• Discuss the most salient and material human rights risks, including children’s rights risks, in the travel and tourism sector
• Discuss different approaches and common challenges to addressing human rights risks impacting the travel and tourism sector
• Highlight the industry’s focus on collaboration and specific actions to leverage and align with existing best practices in other sectors
• Explore strategies that can accelerate progress among a wider spectrum of partners in the travel and tourism sector

Key discussion questions:

•  What are the key human rights risks (including children’s rights risks) in the travel and tourism industry?
• What solutions are companies implementing to address trafficking and sexual exploitation in the context of travel and tourism? Recruitment processes can be very complicated.
• What is your company/organisation doing to better understand the risks associated with the recruitment process and create solutions, particularly in places where the only option is to work with a labour recruitment agency?
• What innovative solutions have the industry / companies developed to advance protection for human rights and specifically children’s rights in travel and tourism?

Format of the discussion:
Roundtable discussion format.

Programme:

1. Introduction (13:30 - 13:45) 
2. Solutions developed to address risks of sexual exploitation of children in the context of travel and tourism (13:45 - 14:00)
3. Solutions developed to address human rights risks in the recruitment supply chain (14:00 - 14:15)
4. Beyond risk management: scaling-up innovative solutions in Travel and Tourism (14:15 - 14:25)
5. Interactive session with audience – Scenarios (14:25 - 14:45)

Background to the discussion:
Travel and Tourism is one of the fastest-growing sectors with the industry producing 1 in 10 jobs around the world. The sector involves millions of people in its activities, connecting travellers to communities, and relying on complex supply chains. As the industry expands, it endeavours to have a positive impact on human rights, including children’s rights, and to maintain practices that contribute to the UN SDGs. From air travel to hospitality, to local tourist sites management, tourism can negatively affect a vast range of human rights. This session will focus on the industry’s most material risks: human trafficking, forced labour and the sexual exploitation of children.
In recent years, a growing number of global, regional and national entities have taken innovative measures to ensure that as the travel and tourism industry grows, workers’ rights and child protection are taken into consideration. The private sector can be a key alley in preventing sexual exploitation of children and providing safe pathways to employment. The objective of this roundtable will be to present the solutions developed collectively in the sector through multistakeholder initiatives and by individual companies to inspire and foster wider collaboration with corporate and government stakeholders.

Key research and initiatives have been achieved in the tourism sector on this topic which will provide background to this discussion:

• The Global Study on the Sexual Exploitation of Children in Travel and Tourism, that was the result of inputs from 67 global partners.
• The Call for Action from the first International Summit on Child Protection in Travel and Tourism provide a roadmap how to address this worldwide challenge while contributing to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Goals.
• The ITP Goal on human rights in the hotel industry to raise awareness of human rights risks, embed human rights into corporate governance, and address risks arising in the labour supply chain and during construction.
• The ITP Principles on Forced Labour launched at the IHRB-ILO Global Forum for Responsible Recruitment and Employment in June 2018

Interpretation is provided in English, French and Spanish.

Organized by the International Organisation of Employers 

Brief description
This session will focus on how the responsibility to respect human rights applies to SMEs and what can be done to strengthen their engagement on human rights. The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) acknowledge that the means through which a company meets its responsibility to respect human rights "will be proportional to, among other factors, its size," adding that SMEs "may have less capacity, as well as more informal processes and management structures than larger companies, so their respective policies and processes will take on different forms."
To date, most awareness-raising, capacity building and policy-related efforts have focused on the world's largest brands and retailers, with SMEs often an afterthought in discussions and initiatives on responsible business conduct and business and human rights. Yet, SMEs form the backbone of national economies and the global supply chains of large companies. They account for about 90% of all businesses (according to the International Finance Corporation) and they contribute up to 45% of total employment (according to the World Bank). Their collective contribution to society and the planet is huge.

Session objectives

• To explore the different challenges and conditions facing SMEs and how awareness-raising and capacity-building efforts and policy measures can be better tailored to support SMEs to respect human rights in line with their respective size, capacity, resources, and impact on human rights.
• To draw attention onto the world's largest category of companies, and away from the usual focus on global brands and retailers – ie: how can we widen implementation of the UNGPs?

Key discussion questions

1. How does respect for human rights, including the human rights due diligence process, apply to SMEs?
2. How do SMEs currently act in a responsible manner and what lessons can be drawn from this?
3. What are the drivers for SMEs to implement the UNGPs? How can more SMEs be encouraged to respect human rights in situations where the drivers are less applicable?
4. What opportunities and challenges face SMEs in respecting human rights?
5. How do policy measures currently impact on SMEs? What policy responses are needed based on these lessons?
6. What practical support can be provided to assist SMEs?

Background to the discussion
Useful links

• In 2017, the IOE developed a "Three-part course for SMEs on Communicating on Sustainability Issues" (together with GRI)
• ENGLISH version
• FRENCH version
• SPANISH version
• 2018: "Human rights due diligence for SMEs" (page 7 of the Companion Note II to the UN Working Group’s 2018 report to the General Assembly on "Corporate human rights due diligence – Getting started, emerging practices, tools & resources")
• 2013: European Commission's "Guide to Human Rights for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises"

Organized by Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)

Brief description of the session:
What’s the problem with corporate reporting on human rights? Can companies realistically report on their human rights impacts and progress made?
Join business, civil society and reporting initiatives to consider what makes meaningful corporate human rights reporting and how we can get there. You will be invited to share your views and to think along on how key challenges can be solved.
Two companies will explain how they reported on human rights in their latest sustainability reports and will receive a critique on their report from a civil society expert.

Session objectives:

• Identify what makes meaningful corporate human rights reporting from the perspectives of different stakeholders.
• Identify key challenges in corporate human rights reporting and how they may be solved.

Key discussion questions:

• Human rights issues continue to be under-reported and current reporting practice leaves much room for improvement. What are the main reasons for this? How can obstacles to reporting be overcome?
• Current reporting focuses primarily on the commitment and process elements, but there’s very little reporting on outcomes and impacts. Can companies realistically report on their human rights impacts and progress made? What is the role of quantification and metrics?

Links to sustainability reports that will be discussed:

• Rio Tinto’s 2017 Sustainable development report
• Nestlé’s Creating Shared Value Report 2017

Format of the session:

• A conversation between GRI, Shift and IIRC on how to achieve more meaningful corporate human rights reporting
• Audience interaction
• Presentation by Nestlé and Rio Tinto on their human rights reporting and critique by the Alliance for Corporate Transparency
• Audience interaction

Background to the discussion:
The UNGPs call on business enterprises to communicate how they address their human rights impacts. Legal requirements to communicate on human rights due diligence are being introduced, such as the French corporate duty of vigilance law or the UK Modern Slavery Act.

Most of the world’s largest corporations issue non-financial or “sustainability” reports which can include human rights. Most of these reports use frameworks, predominantly the GRI Standards. However human rights issues continue to be under-reported and there is much room for improvement.

Recent studies by GRI, Shift and the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark indicate that although progress has been made since the launch of the UN Guiding Principles in 2011, corporate human rights reporting is not yet widespread and there’s much room for improvement. [1] [2] [3]

The July 2018 report of the Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises highlights that disclosure on human rights due diligence is an area in which there is a significant gap between leading practice and the large majority of businesses. Reluctance to disclose information about human rights risks and mitigation efforts seems to be due in large part to perceived legal risks. [4] [5]

The report welcomes efforts underway to develop better indicators for evaluating performance of human rights due diligence, including (a) the work of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) to explore further alignment of its Standards with the Guiding Principles, including how best to report on management approaches to due diligence; (b) work to explore the close relationship between integrated reporting and reporting in line with the Guiding Principles; and (c) a project by the non-profit organization Shift, to develop better ways of using information, metrics and indicators to evaluate respect for human rights by businesses.

The report further highlights the following core aspects of good practice: (a) clear recognition of what the risks to people are and (b) accurate descriptions of the due diligence processes that the business enterprise has in place to address specific risks.

This session will invite discussion on what is needed to increase and improve corporate human rights reporting and communication, including barriers to reporting and how these may be overcome, as well as how best to report on human rights due diligence and human rights impacts.

[1] GRI and Centro Vincular-PUCV, Shining a light on human rights: corporate human rights performance disclosure in the mining, energy and financial sectors, 2016.
[2] Corporate Human Right Benchmark, Key Findings 2018, 2018.
[3] Shift, Human Rights Reporting: Are companies telling investors what they need to know?, 2017.
[4] Working Group’s General Assembly report, A/73/163 (paragraphs 46-47 and 91)
[5] Companion note II to the Working Group’s 2018 report to the General Assembly (A/73/163) (pages 12-13)

Brief description of the session:
This session led by the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights aims to take a ‘deep dive’ on the issue of human rights due diligence in practice in the banking sector. Specifically it will provide an opportunity to highlight:

• the current state of play of how commercial banks are meeting the requirements set out in the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights
• how some banks are conducting human rights due diligence against specific human rights impacts with which they may be involved through lending activities
• key considerations for ensuring that the human rights due diligence concept in line with the Guiding Principles and the recent OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Business Conduct is integrated in the forthcoming revision of the Equator Principles and other frameworks for responsible banking practice

Background reading:

• Working Group 2018 report on human rights due diligence in practice
• Working Group report on “economic diplomacy” that includes focus on the practice of export credit agencies
• OHCHR paper on how the UN Guiding Principles apply in the banking sector