It’s the last weekend of 2012, and by now I’m sure you’ve been inundated with top ten lists. However, if you’re like me, you have never before seen a “top ten” list on business and human rights issues. Until now.
This year, not one, but two organizations have come up with a “top issues” list for 2013. Charles Borden and Schan Duff (of the law firm of Allen Overy) prognosticated their Top 5 Human Rights Issues for Businesses. The article appeared in the law firm’s inaugural Business and Human Rights Review. Meanwhile, the Institute for Human Rights and Business, created not only a top ten list but disseminated it with video, thereby guaranteeing its relevance to a younger generation.
I won’t give away their views on things (you’ll just have to access them yourself), but, I will say this – the tenor of each of these lists seems to reflect the various markets/readership/clientele base that are at each organization’s core. As a result, there are no overlapping issues in these two lists. There is nothing ground breaking about this insight – that an organization will cater to its core audience (which lucky for me, since I don’t have an audience, I can mainly write this for myself). However, it does reflect what I think is the greatest challenge for BHR in moving the issues from principles to implementation. That issue is this – finding a means to translate BHR issues in a way that both human rights advocates and businesses can understand. So, for instance, how do “corporate governance risks” and “forced labor” issues relate? How can you get both sides to understand that, while human rights due diligence and corporate due diligence are very different things, the policies and operations that companies must institute to guard the former will almost invariably help the latter? How do you get an executive to address the needs of victims or communities in rhetoric (and actions) that they understand, instead of using a “corporate speak” that will almost assuredly alienate those communities?
This is my concern as a scholar and a global citizen. Hopefully, we can use the next year to make meaningful strides to a solution.
Check in this time next year to see how we did.
