2018 United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights

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:
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.

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.

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:
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.

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 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

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.