2018 United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights

Organized by BSR and The B Team

Session objectives:
The discussion will consider a number of key questions on the minds of business executives, policymakers and civil society. Key objectives include:

• Identifying risks and opportunities for business and investors to improve overall protection for human rights while also improving the business environment
• Sharing examples of business or investor engagement in policy that support human rights, and identifying pressure points from stakeholders
• Acknowledging the critique of undue corporate influence in public spheres, which may undermine rights or deepen inequality, explore and discuss holistic corporate advocacy approaches that respect and support human rights

Background to the discussion:
Around the world, we have seen instances of policy reversals on human rights protections and programs, which were critical to creating the enabling environment for business to respect human rights.  In addition to these policy reversals, many governments continue to have restrictive or discriminatory laws in place towards particular groups, such as women or migrants.
As part of the “protect, respect and remedy” framework, the UN Guiding Principles created a global baseline expectation on companies to respect human rights, while also guiding business to use its ‘leverage’ in business relationships to help governments protect these rights. Exercising business leverage is more complex when human rights impacts are not caused by a company or ‘directly linked’ to its operations, products, and services. 
When states are not fulfilling their duty to protect human rights, how can or should business use its leverage to support human rights in policy engagement?
This interactive session will give participants an opportunity to engage in important questions on businesses’ role in public policy engagement to support human rights, deepening social exclusion and rampant inequality.
 
Session Design Principles:
Informative discussion inviting a diversity of perspectives

1. Participatory and engaging
2. Provides valuable ideas for potential areas of future collaboration
3. Provides valuable ideas for potential areas of future collaboration

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.