Human Rights and Business? Human rights IN Business

At our Women in Compliance event in July, we explored the role of human rights in business and the changing legal landscape around it.

We were joined by Moira Oliver, Head of Policy & Chief Counsel, Human / Digital Rights at BT Group. Moira leads BT’s global human rights programme and shared her experiences of how the corporate world contextualises human rights. While she acknowledges that it is a fundamental expectation that businesses themselves should do no harm, Moira spoke about how the expectation is now that businesses should not be linked to harm in their wider value chain – whether that’s suppliers in the lower tiers of a supply chain, or customers using the services that businesses provide. This means creating a company culture underpinned by a holistic understanding of human rights, consistent with the the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which are now the standard expected.

"... the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which are now the standard expected."

Getting buy-in

It’s something we hear repeatedly when we talk about compliance - it can be difficult to get buy-in without challenges from outside. In 2014, BT had questions about how its business and interactions with governments could affect human rights. As a result, BT took the decision to do an assessment of the impact of its UK business on human rights.

"...'translating’ the requirements for your audience is really important."

But without a challenge, it can be difficult to demonstrate the value in developing a human rights in business programme, not least because the level of understanding of the role of business in respecting human rights, and the associated legal mechanisms, are still relatively in their infancy. Moira therefore identified that ‘translating’ the requirements for your audience is really important. Think about using language that may be more familiar to people, such as ‘responsible business’ or ‘the role of business in society’. It is particularly helpful to do this when working across different local cultures in a global company. 

It’s also important to realise that many of the existing processes a company has in place can be adjusted to take account of human rights – such as its ethics policies, and privacy impact assessments (as required by GDPR) or supply chain assessments. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel.

Senior level engagement definitely helps drive support: BT has an executive director with responsibility for human rights. But it also has a human rights working group with representatives from across the business to help drive broader engagement and implementation of BT’s approach throughout.

Identifying issues

Identifying and acting on human rights issues in geographically-dispersed, and long supply chains can be difficult and time-consuming. Businesses need to design ways that allow them to focus on the most pressing areas of concern. For BT, this has meant:

• Thinking about whether certain sectors or countries might present higher risks than others (for example, if migrant labour is more prevalent) and focusing resources there. Companies may well already have “high risk” categories defined for other issues, such as bribery and corruption compliance and given the overlap in the driving factors for this and human rights abuses, these criteria can often be adopted with little or no change.
• Adjusting existing processes to incorporate a focus on human rights. For example, in procurement and in audit, where teams are already engaging with suppliers, it can be relatively easy to build in additional questions and checks around human rights, or strengthen expectations on working standards through tougher contract requirements.
• Training suppliers and their associates – for BT, this was particularly helpful when a staff member identified an issue in a sub-supplier.
• Collaborating with other companies or organisations to try and tackle systemic changes – one company alone is unlikely to make a long-term difference. 

Improving standards

BT tries to raise standards within their supply chain through engagement

In response to identifying human rights-related issues, BT tries to raise standards within their supply chain by engaging with them, rather than immediately terminating contracts when issues are identified because that could lead to even greater harm to people’s rights. That’s not to say that this is easy and businesses need to be pragmatic about the extent to which they can achieve this. Within other operations, having a human rights policy and supporting processes will help identify issues. 

Throughout, it is important to consider cultural barriers when designing your approach and to ensure that in trying to do the right thing, you are not compromising your staff’s safety. When asked about what to do if local laws conflict with international human rights standards, Moira emphasised that the UN Guiding Principles say that companies must comply with the law, and also find ways to honour international human rights standards. This can be tricky but Moira spoke about a model, which might be useful to keep in mind in deciding what approach you take. 

Lack of consistency and enforcement

Although the UN Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948, not all countries have been consistent in implementing and enforcing it in their own laws. However, since the UN Guiding Principles were adopted there has been quite a lot of movement to reflect business’ role in respecting human rights and countries are starting to have specific legislation on the statute books. The UK has the Modern Slavery Act, as does Australia now and France has adopted a mandatory human rights due diligence law. The EU’s Non-Financial Reporting Directive requires companies to report on their human rights policies and their effectiveness. When they are specific about the action required, these laws can be helpful in creating a framework for businesses to follow rather than having to interpret soft law, such as the UN Guiding Principles. 

"... the UN Treaty on Business and Human Rights has made progress and, over time, could emerge as a game changer."

For global businesses though, it would be useful to have a standard approach. Moira pointed out that the UN Treaty on Business and Human Rights has made progress and, over time, could emerge as a game changer.

In the meantime, there are increasing efforts to hold companies to account through the courts. The UK Supreme Court case of Vedanta Resources plc and another v Lungowe and others found that in principle a UK parent company could be held responsible for the harm caused by the extraction activities of one of its subsidiaries in Zambia because it had, among other things, published a sustainability report emphasising the control it had over its subsidiaries and provided HSE training across its group companies. 

To find out more about embedding a human rights programme into your company, contact Moira Oliver at [email protected]. 

If you would like to join Women in Compliance networking group to discuss this or other compliance issues, contact [email protected].