A New Year and time for a new CEO at IHRB

Some of you might already know that I am moving on from the Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB) before the end of 2025. The past 16 years have been a blast and I hope that this blog can persuade a few of you to consider applying.

When IHRB was founded in April 2009, Professor John Ruggie was just finishing his first mandate and had published the ‘Protect, Respect, Remedy’ framework. The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) were but a glint in his eye. The ad hoc steering group formed to guide the creation of the Institute over the preceding 18 months held consultations in Delhi, Nairobi, Bogota, London, Geneva, and New York. There was a widely shared view at the time that an impartial organization was needed to work between interests of business, government and civil society. Such an organization would need to advance thought leadership, and promote understanding that collective action was essential given the systemic nature of many of human rights challenges. Several decades of work on the role of business on issues such as energy, land, migration, conflict, water, and health were shared during the consultations that reflected where priorities should focus in the time ahead. It was? clear that economic, social, and cultural rights were essential determinants of how businesses should behave in the world, just as much as civil, political, and labour rights.

Looking back, it is now easier to see that IHRB was the result of many strands coming together: the legacy of Amnesty International’s ‘business groups’; the Business Leaders Initiative on Human Rights; John Ruggie’s previous work at the UN Global Compact and then as Special Representative gathering momentum; the review of the International Finance Corporation’s Performance Standards; and not to mention the longstanding unresolved injustices of industrial disasters in Bhopal and the Niger Delta, Colombia’s death squads, sweat shops everywhere. For my part, it was also Anita and Gordon Roddick’s legacy at The Body Shop, where I once worked as a campaigner. To launch a new organisation at the very time the world was struggling to emerge from a financial crisis was perhaps foolhardy. But the financial crisis illustrated the point that the current system was broken and that woolly thinking about ‘corporate social responsibility’ (CSR) was never going to cut it. We owe a great debt to a few key individuals and organisations for supporting IHRB in 2009 when it was no more than an idea.

Has IHRB advanced its mission? I can’t possibly try to answer this question objectively and it is for others to do so. I hope at least it might be said that we never ducked a challenge. Our work in establishing the Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business led by Vicky Bowman (with our partners at the Danish Institute for Human Rights), the Centro Regional de Empresas y Emprendimientos Responsables (CREER) in Colombia, thanks to Luis Fernando de Angulo, and now Gulf Sustain in Gulf Cooperation Council countries have shown our willingness to be part of an evidence-led approach to what works and what does not in diverse economic, political, and cultural environments. I think also of our work in Kenya and East Africa thanks to Wambui Kimathi and Rose Kimotho. The world of business and human rights has its fair share of na?ve and wishful thinking and I hope we have not added to these conceits. We have also tried to build leverage thematically, and form new alliances wherever possible. The Global Forum for Responsible Recruitment, the development and promotion of the ‘employer pays principle’, the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark, and the Centre for Sport and Human Rights are all evidence of this. In the case of the Benchmark, I believe this work helped provide an objective evidence base for mandatory due diligence laws, and how they will need to be implemented in the time ahead. .

The business and human rights ecosystem is clearly much larger and more complex today than it was in 2009 (whilst it remains a niche within the wider sustainability field). Some try to plot all the various players on a linear access – from the ‘business friendly’ entities through to the ‘corporate accountability campaigners’. Such simplistic thinking has always bugged me. I have tried to foster a culture in IHRB that is about trust and maintaining access to the people that make decisions – from those in the boardrooms of companies through to human rights defenders on the ground. It has always been about the people making or experiencing the impacts more than proxies.

I also want to acknowledge the three friends and colleagues who have been with me from the start of IHRB – Salil Tripathi, Scott Jerbi, and Frances House – and to the networks they brought to the table in 2009. Chris Marsden was a champion of our efforts from the start. And none of what we’ve done would have been possible without Mary Robinson, and her willingness to be our founding chair and lend her name to our work. I am especially proud of how the relationship with Mary has endured, and that in 2025 we will launch an innovation fund in her name (more on this over the months ahead)! Mary’s time as chair was followed by two other great leaders - John Ruggie and now Margot Wallstr?m. I have to pinch myself sometimes.

Part of IHRB’s endurance has been waves of colleagues that have since joined us and have added to our entrepreneurial and creative culture. I should single out here Julia Batho, Deputy CEO of IHRB, whose commitment and professionalism has given me renewed confidence in the future of the organisation.? She will be a valuable partner to the incoming CEO. Another crucial factor has been the quality and commitment of IHRB’s trustees over the years, currently co-chaired by Deanna Kemp and Ron Popper. Our trustees are gold dust and again give me great faith in how the organisation will develop further in the years ahead.

One challenge for the next CEO will be to find new ways of driving collective action forward that result in stronger accountability across the board and to communicate the critical importance of human rights and responsible business to a wider range of policymakers and society more generally. The growing lack of trust in institutions and decision-making processes has resulted in a world where power and wealth are increasingly accumulated in the hands of a few highly powerful, and increasingly unaccountable, individuals. Ultimately, the only check on this power is people themselves – workers, communities, consumers. Creating better alignment between these interest groups is very hard, but when it happens it can change the world.

What next for me? I want to think, write and broadcast more and to a more mainstream audience. I hope to step up with some new advisory and governance roles. My obsessions remain how technology, trade and finance can each be leveraged for better outcomes. I continue to follow refugee protection and archaeology – my previous careers. I love history, cosmology, and puppetry.? Do let me know if you know of a job that combines all of these.

IHRB has launched its recruitment for our next CEO. I hope you’ll visit our website for more details. I’ll be cheering on IHRB, and wishing the entire team only the best in all they will achieve in the years to come.

#humanrights #responsiblebusiness #sustainability