Top 10 for 2020
John Morrison
CEO @ Institute for Human Rights and Business | Diplomacy in Sustainability
For the tenth year running, the Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB) publishes its top ten issues for the year ahead today, 10 December: International Human Rights Day.
At the start of a new decade, the human rights movement faces a perilous future. The multilateral, rules-based system is under attack, the climate crisis is at the point of no return, and the future of work itself is in a state of profound change.
At this inflection point, and to mark our 10th anniversary, IHRB is also publishing a short history of the business and human rights agenda and podcast conversation with diverse experts that seek to offer useful reflections on the future direction of the movement.
Here they are below, in no specific order. As always, we welcome your comments, feedback, collaboration, and ideas.
1. JUST TRANSITIONS
Confronting the climate crisis while fostering rights-respecting jobs and empowered communities
Responding to the climate crisis requires fundamental changes to the global economy that will have far reaching impacts, including for the future of work and efforts to progressively realise a range of economic, social, and cultural rights.
2. FAKE NEWS
Harnessing collective power to combat lies and propaganda online
The Internet should enable access to information that states or powerful interests want suppressed. But the troubling spread of misinformation and disinformation online presents serious challenges, including for business. Propaganda on radio and television could once be physically ‘jammed’ in the past. It is harder to do so with the Internet, where purveyors of false information or "fake news" find newer ways to reach their targets for a growing range of purposes.
3. PURPOSE
Redefining the role of corporations to align with societal expectations
In August 2019, the US based Business Roundtable surprised shareholders and stakeholders alike by publishing a statement which argued that companies should no longer advance only the interests of shareholders. Instead, they must also invest in their employees, protect the environment, and deal fairly and ethically with suppliers. The Roundtable’s membership includes some of the world’s largest companies, including Apple, Pepsi, Walmart, and JP Morgan Chase. While not saying anything that would surprise activists who have been making similar points for decades, the Roundtable’s position suggests emerging agreement that companies have a larger social purpose beyond profit.
4. CITIES
Embedding dignity while building communities
Climate change, economic inequality, and conflict are pushing growing numbers of people into cities. By 2050 two thirds of the world’s population will live in urban areas. 90% of this increase will be in Asia and Africa.
5. STATE ACTION
Expanding calls for mandatory human rights due diligence
The 2019 UN Forum on Business and Human Rights highlighted growing calls for states to move from rhetoric to reality, with the overall theme of “Time to act: Governments as catalysts for business respect for human rights.” Since 2011, only 20 governments have adopted national action plans (NAPs) on business and human rights with similar numbers currently in process. Guidance to assist states in the development of such plans alongside related follow up initiatives and initial comparative reviews provide useful tools to assess good practice.
6. SEXUAL HARASSMENT
Transforming cultures and developing robust grievance mechanisms to eliminate abuse at work
Over the past two years, allegations against powerful men in government, the judiciary, international NGOs, the academy, and particularly in the media and entertainment industries, shocked people around the world. That such incidents involved successful and powerful women gave the issue increased prominence.
7. WEAPONISING LAWSUITS
Stopping the practice of blocking human rights defenders from challenging business activity
For too long, companies and civil society organisations have viewed each other as polar opposites. While constructive partnerships are possible, and examples of creative collaboration that lead to positive change show what can be done, the relationships between business and civil society have too often been adversarial. Indeed, these sectors represent entirely different viewpoints, and more often than not their aims, objectives, and priorities differ. But that is hardly unique; companies do not necessarily share the opinions of their competitors, nor of their home or host governments.
8. SURVEILLANCE
Establishing safeguards for new technologies that may undermine rights
Technology is not only omnipresent, but proponents have championed its potential to transform lives and help promote and protect human rights with little or no downside risks. Artificial intelligence can speed up processes and thinking, offering solutions simply too time-consuming for human minds. Facial recognition can reunite families in war-affected regions. Algorithms can take guesswork out of decision-making. Recruitment agencies can use new technologies to help eliminate inherent biases.
9. WORKER VOICE
Defending rights of assembly and speech at work
People do not leave their opinions and identities at home when they come to work. They bring their viewpoints, prejudices, and convictions to their factories, offices, and other workplaces. Negotiating that space is a challenge for companies, because permitting the expression of some views may undermine others’ rights, and complying with government orders, for example, by suppressing workers’ involvement in peaceful protest, can infringe personal liberties. Companies have long been compelled to modify policies and practices because staff have taken strong views on important issues, from dockworkers campaigning against apartheid to those calling for management to change business practices in the Occupied Territories. In some cases, workers have acted on their own, as was seen when Google employees succeeded in lobbying their management to stop working with the US Department of Defense over a controversial project.
10. GENDER IDENTITY
Understanding gender fluidity and making workplaces inclusive
People have always felt and loved in ways that do not conform to rigid societal norms. The human rights community and the world at large are beginning to recognise the complexities of human identity, in part by changing laws to more accurately reflect the diversity of that experience. Much more needs to be done, even as a growing number of countries have begun to decriminalise same-sex relationships, and recognise marriage between two people of the same sex.
(reproduced by kind permission of IHRB)