The U.N.’s first Business and Human Rights conference started today and I am lucky enough to be attending. While I’m sure that I will spend sometime over the coming weeks digesting what I heard and what I learned, allow me to share my initial thoughts.
The conference is huge.
In their press release describing the event the organizers stated that the registration “exceeded expectations.” It would seem that this is an understatement. Over 1000 people registered for the conference. The visual of what that looks like is stunning. For instance, during the session on corporate responsibility (one of the breakout sessions), we sat in a room that could easily seat 500 people. It was packed.
The conference is diverse.
The other first impression that I had was how many different stakeholders were represented. There were of course, the usual suspects- people who represented advocacy groups, people who represented government (I was heartened that representatives from our State Department were there and a number of academics. However, there were also people representing indigenous communities sitting next to people who represented Nestle. Seeing everyone there, trying together to work through these issues, was heartening.
There is so much that I don’t know.
I became an academic after Ruggie’s work was in full swing. It wasn’t until after I had started writing about these issues that I even discovered this field of business and human rights as its own discipline with a common understanding and framework. Being in the room with people who had helped to craft these principles was humbling. The work that they have done in beginning to develop a shared language, one that both business and human rights workers can understand, had done much to lay the foundation for a human rights framework in which businesses can play a positive role.
We are far behind.
In speaking to many of my American colleagues at the conference, the one theme that emerged is that we are far behind. One attendee who works in the field describes the difference between going to a business and human rights meeting in Australia versus going to one back in the States. In Australia, he notes that all of the relevant people will be sitting at the table, including representatives from government. They will all have read the Respect Framework and Guiding Principles, and be familiar with Ruggie’s work. In contrast, when he takes a meeting in the United States he finds he needs to spend at least some of his time educating people on who John Ruggie is.
I think there are many reasons for this (much of which I’ve talked about in other blogs) but, whatever the reason, being this far behind is a problem. I hope to be a part of the solution.
