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Blog | Tuesday October 27, 2020

Four Features of Effective Human Rights Due Diligence

Preview

This blog is the second of a three-part series. In the first blog, we focused on the current landscape of mandatory human rights due diligence (HRDD), disclosure requirements, and the push towards a more universal approach. This blog will discuss the elements that BSR has found important for effective HRDD, and our third blog will focus on further unpacking the various options being proposed in the European Union’s mandatory Human Rights Due Diligence Legislation (EU mHRDD).

The EU’s proposed mandatory human rights due diligence legislation has the potential to reshape the way that companies manage their human rights risks—and to boost the impact of company efforts to prevent, mitigate, and remedy these risks. In line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), the EU directive will require companies to carry out effective due diligence to identify, prevent, mitigate, and account for actual and potential human rights and environmental impacts in their own operations as well as in their upstream and downstream value chains. The European Commission is expected to submit a formal legislative proposal in early or mid-2021, with the legislation expected to come into force by early 2022.

As we anticipate the new regulations requiring due diligence, the question for companies then becomes: What does “effective due diligence” look like?

To be impactful—to achieve the desired outcomes of reduced human rights abuses and increased realization of human rights—effective due diligence requires more than a tick-box approach to process and procedure. Over the past 25 years, BSR has worked with companies to manage human rights risks, including more than 200 human rights impact assessments and implementation plans. Drawing on these learnings, we emphasize four features of effective human rights due diligence:

1. Effective human rights due diligence is forward looking. The forward-looking nature of human rights assessments is one of the most powerful tools companies have to ensure respect for human rights. By identifying potential impacts in advance, companies can put in place actions to prevent and mitigate harm. As stated in the UNGPs (Principle 18), human rights due diligence should be conducted prior to any new activity or relationship and prior to significant business decisions or changes in operation. Futures thinking and strategic foresight methods, such as trend analysis and scenario planning, enable companies to increase the range of potential adverse human rights impacts identified and surface new strategies to address those impacts. BSR’s new quarterly emerging issues brief, The Fast Forward, can help companies to track nascent disruptive trends.
    
2. Effective human rights due diligence is ongoing. Due diligence should not be a one-off event. Ongoing due diligence enables companies to track shifts in the operating environment—such as new laws or rising social tensions—that may change their human rights risk profile. The ability of a company to nimbly respond to such change depends not only on formal processes for updating risk assessments. It will also require regular stakeholder engagement (including dialogue with human rights defenders) as well as a culture of sharing and escalating internal concerns to the appropriate decision-makers inside the company. The most effective programs we have seen have integrated recurring due diligence checkpoints in their operations.
    
3. Effective human rights due diligence recognizes the company as part of a system. No matter where they are located or what industry they are in, companies operate in geographical contexts and product value chains that are shaped by preexisting dynamics. These dynamics can produce human rights abuses in which companies may become complicit, such as systemic racism in the U.S., gender-based violence in India, and confiscation of Indigenous lands across Latin America. While companies may cause or contribute to individual adverse human rights impacts, these harms occur in the context of the wider system. Companies should understand their role in shaping these systems and the ways their actions, combined with those of other companies, cumulatively impact people. Companies can effect change in these systems and increase their leverage, impact, and legitimacy by collaborating with other actors. This is particularly the case in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. In these cases, companies and other actors can assume a shared responsibility to address the multiple and intertwined causes of conflict and human rights violations in combination, increasing the likelihood of beneficial outcomes for everyone. Additionally, companies should understand how their internal ecosystem may affect the success of human rights programs: contradictory commercial targets, political advocacy, and business priorities may work against a company’s own human rights commitments.


4. Effective human rights due diligence is grounded in stakeholder engagement—especially with the most vulnerable. Rightsholders—the employees, customers, users, supply chain workers, and community members whose rights are impacted by company decisions, products, and operations—provide information that enables companies to understand their human rights risks. They do this by raising concerns about actual and potential impacts and by providing input about how best to address and remediate these impacts. Companies should make extra effort to engage with vulnerable groups to avoid aggravating structural oppression and disproportionately negative impacting people who are at heightened risk. Proactive consultation, formal grievance mechanisms, and ongoing dialogue with people who are impacted in different ways by the company’s business activity positions the company to design, implement, and track the effectiveness of their human rights due diligence programs.

Ultimately, human rights due diligence is about preventing, mitigating, and remedying harm to people impacted by business. To be meaningful, companies must look beyond process to real-world outcomes and ensure that their teams have the knowledge, the skills, and the relationships to shape these outcomes for the better. We believe that mandatory human rights due diligence requirements should be designed to support rather than hinder these four features of effective human rights due diligence.

Primers | Tuesday November 14, 2017

10 Human Rights Priorities for the Extractives Sector

Preview

Human rights are inherent to all human beings. They are defined and established in more than 80 international legal instruments¹ and define the fundamental protections of human dignity, needs, and freedoms, such as food, housing, privacy, personal security, and democratic participation. Since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948, the responsibility to protect human rights has primarily fallen on governments. Beginning in the early 2000s, however, it became increasingly clear that the freedoms enshrined in the framework could also be violated—and promoted—by the private sector.

In 2011, the UN Human Rights Council unanimously endorsed the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (Guiding Principles), the first international instrument to assign companies the responsibility to respect human rights. The Guiding Principles state that governments must put in place good policies, laws, and enforcement measures to prevent companies from violating rights; that companies must refrain from negatively impacting rights even when governments are failing to create or enforce necessary laws; and that victims of corporate abuses must have access to effective remedy. As part of this responsibility, the Guiding Principles require companies to undertake due diligence to identify and manage their negative human rights impacts.

This issue brief identifies the 10 most relevant, urgent, and probable human rights impacts for businesses operating in the extractives sector, as well as suggestions and opportunities for positive impact. The information here is gathered from BSR's direct engagement with extractives sector companies, as well as our 25 years of experience helping companies in all sectors manage their human rights risks.

The extractives sector comprises a range of businesses and activities, including exploration ventures and mining and extractives operators. While each business will have its own human rights profile and challenges depending on the local conditions and profile of its projects, this primer highlights universal risks for companies operating in the mining and extractives industry.

Blog | Tuesday March 28, 2017

BSR's Statement on the U.S. Administration Executive Order on Climate Change

Preview

BSR regrets today’s executive order from U.S. President Donald Trump to dismantle the Clean Power Plan, a set of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) policies that are intended to reduce the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels and cut carbon pollution from the power sector by 30 percent by 2030. In combination with the administration's dramatic cuts to climate programs at the EPA and U.S. State Department, this announcement undermines policies that have stimulated economic growth, consumer savings, job creation, infrastructure investment, private-sector competitiveness, and public health.

Business Supports Climate Ambition

In the past several years, many American companies have set ambitious energy efficiency and renewable energy targets. Business has taken action because it understands the economic and environmental benefits of these steps, as well as the opportunity for innovation that the shift to low-carbon prosperity represents. The Clean Power Plan (CPP) provides a platform for these companies with reliable and resilient sources of clean energy and, in turn, generates substantial economic and public health benefits. Just 18 months ago, the U.S. federal government estimated the net economic benefits of the CPP at US$26-45 billion, with consumers set to save US$155 billion from 2020 to 2030. In addition, the CPP provides regulatory support to the clean energy economy, which, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy and Employment Report, supported more than 3 million U.S. jobs in 2016. The public health benefits are also significant. Research suggests the Clean Power Plan could prevent 3,600 premature deaths and more than 300,000 missed work and school days by cutting pollutants that contribute to soot and smog.

Finally, this order comes at a time when U.S. public concern about climate change is at an eight-year high, with Gallup reporting that 64 percent of Americans are concerned a "great deal" or "fair amount" about the issue. 

Trump's executive order puts this substantial progress at risk, but two critical factors continue to suggest that the transition to a low-carbon economy remains inevitable.

1. Clean power is the energy of choice for resilient and successful businesses and investors.

During the past two years alone, more than 500 companies with US$8 trillion of revenue, and more than 180 investors with assets under management in excess of US$20 trillion have made more than 1,000 commitments to purchase renewable energy, reduce their emissions in line with the best available science, set carbon prices, and end deforestation. Walmart, the largest company by revenue and the largest private employer in the world, committed to reduce emissions by 18 percent. In making the announcement, CEO Doug McMillon said, “We want to make sure Walmart is a company that our associates and customers are proud of—and that we are always doing right by them and by the communities they live in.”

These companies are part of a growing movement in the private sector that sees profits, job creation, competitiveness, innovation, and stewardship of the environment as a virtuous circle—one that delivers for shareholders, workers, and communities across the globe.

Companies like these are committed to clean power because it makes business sense. Many of these companies are achieving an average internal rate of return of 27 percent on their low-carbon investments. And research conducted by CDP shows that decoupling growth from carbon leads on average to a 29 percent increase in revenue alongside a 26 percent drop in emissions.

These companies recognize that renewable energy technologies, such as wind and solar, have low and stable marginal costs that are generated or purchased at or below the cost of fossil-fuel-generated power sources. This allows companies to hedge fuel price volatility and future increases in electricity rates. An increasing number of these companies are using power purchase agreements to lock in electricity prices for 10-20 years, providing cost certainty. Global investment in renewable energy power capacity in 2015, worth US$265.8 billion, was more than double the dollar allocations for new coal and gas generation (estimated at US$130 billion in 2015).

Many leading businesses have stated their clear desire to see the CPP survive. In April 2016, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft jointly submitted a brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in defense of the Clean Power Plan. By the third quarter of 2016, these companies were the top four most valuable publicly traded companies in the world by market capitalization, accounting for more than 7 percent of U.S. GDP. The four companies have all stated clearly that the Clean Power Plan incentivized renewable energy and enabled business to reconcile duty to shareholders with care for community and planet.

Business has set a course for a low-carbon economy fueled by clean power and intends to continue that journey, irrespective of changes to U.S. federal policy.

2. The political will to act is resolute across the globe and deep within the United States.

The historic Paris Agreement on climate change brought together 196 governments to commit to deep decarbonization well before the end of this century. This commitment is already being translated into national climate policies in the form of 189 national climate action plans. Collectively, these plans provide business with the direction, confidence, and certainty it needs to make long-term investments in innovation and infrastructure.

Importantly, the plans represent more than US$13 trillion in clean energy investments over the next 15 years. This global multistakeholder consensus remains intact, despite today’s announcement, and will survive policy volatility in Washington in the coming four years. Meeting in Marrakech, Morocco, days after the U.S. presidential election, nearly 200 nations adopted the Marrakech Action Proclamation, reaffirming their commitment to the full implementation of the Paris Agreement. They have been resolute in their belief that “momentum is irreversible,” as it is “driven not only by governments, but by science, business, and global action of all types at all levels.”

In addition, other countries are increasingly assuming a leadership role in the transition to a low-carbon economy. China issued a statement that U.S. political changes would not affect its commitment to realize the ambition of the Paris Agreement. More importantly, China is moving ahead with increasing its non-fossil-fuel share of energy use to around 20 percent by 2030, reducing the carbon intensity of its economy by 65 percent, and launching a national emissions-trading system. Each year, China adds roughly the total existing electricity capacity of a large U.S. state and is the largest investor in renewable energy, spending over US$54 billion in 2013 alone.

We encourage the president to rethink today’s decision. Retreating from the Clean Power Plan injects business uncertainty where it is not needed, turns away from an innovative approach to clean energy that will create valuable new business opportunities, and is out of step with the clearly stated objectives of the most dynamic businesses in the United States and the world. 

Primers | Monday August 21, 2017

10 Human Rights Priorities for the Power and Utilities Sector

Preview

Human rights are inherent to all human beings. They are defined and established in more than 80 international legal instruments¹ and include fundamental protections of human dignity, needs, and freedoms, such as food, housing, privacy, personal security, and democratic participation. Since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948, the responsibility to protect human rights has primarily fallen on governments. Beginning in the early 2000s, however, it became increasingly clear that the freedoms enshrined in the human rights framework could also be violated—and promoted—by the private sector.

In 2011, the UN Human Rights Council unanimously endorsed the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (Guiding Principles), the first international instrument to assign companies the responsibility to respect human rights. The Guiding Principles state that governments must put in place good policies, laws, and enforcement measures to prevent companies from violating rights; companies must refrain from negatively impacting rights even when governments are failing to create or enforce necessary laws; and victims of corporate abuses must have access to effective remedy. As part of this responsibility, the Guiding Principles require companies to undertake due diligence to identify and manage their negative human rights impacts.

This issue brief identifies the 10 most relevant, urgent, and probable human rights impacts for businesses operating in the power and utilities sector. The information here is gathered from BSR’s direct engagement with power and utilities companies, as well as our 25 years of experience helping companies in all sectors manage their human rights risks.

The power and utilities sector comprises a wide range of businesses and activities, from electricity and heat, gas, waste, and water utilities to different actors in the energy markets, like power producers and energy developers. While each of these sub-sectors will have its own human rights profile and challenges, this brief highlights universal risks to the sector as a whole.

Blog | Friday January 19, 2024

Seven Actions for Business in 2024 Post-Roe America

Preview

Since the fall of Roe v. Wade in June 2022, companies from the Fortune 1000 to small businesses have supported abortion access as part of workplace health, safety, and well-being—and as part of gender equity commitments. At a fundamental level, abortion access matters to business because it affects approximately half of the workforce (some 60 million women of reproductive age) and has significant economic impacts on a micro and macro level.

Currently, 21 states and the District of Columbia have enacted more than 80 new laws protecting abortion access while 14 states have made abortion illegal. However, bellwether ballot initiatives since Roe was overturned in seven states, including Ohio, Kansas, Kentucky, Montana and Michigan, affirm that the overwhelming majority want healthcare decisions to remain between patients and providers.

Restrictive public policies compound healthcare deserts in states that extend beyond reproductive care, create avoidable medical emergencies, and impose financial and travel burdens for those seeking abortion access.

Meanwhile, litigation in many states and courts continues to cause confusion alongside the introduction of policy proposals in the states seeking to restrict employers’ benefits. 

This ongoing public health crisis sets up companies as a firewall when it comes to enabling access to abortion—a form of healthcare that one in four women may need over the course of their careers. Employees are aware of this fact. According to 2023 research on Talent and Social Policies conducted by Morning Consult, on behalf of BSR:

• By a 2:1 margin, workers want to live in a state where abortion is legal and accessible.

• Nearly half of workers are concerned for themselves or their partner being criminally charged or going to prison for having an abortion in a state where it is illegal.

• More than a third of workers are concerned about having enough money for themselves or their partner to travel out of state for an abortion. 

Stories are coming out about the severe impact and consequences since the overturn of Roe and state abortion restrictions on women and their families. Nationally, the number of people who crossed state lines to obtain abortion care more than doubled.

In Texas, Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two had to flee the state to obtain an abortion as a result of unsuccessful litigation to clarify medical exceptions. According to Reed Smith, the law firm that filed an amicus on behalf of businesses that operate in Texas: 

“This is why businesses will continue to struggle to recruit and retain talent [in Texas]. This is why pregnant women from other states are hesitant to travel to Texas for business meetings. This is why conferences are moving their events to other states. This is why doctors are leaving the state." 

What actions can companies take in this environment? 

1. Continue to Mitigate Harm on the Workforce 

Audit the availability of abortion care to ensure coverage under all circumstances within networks through medical plans where the company operates, including remote workers.

• Ensure that employees can go out of network, at no added cost if necessary, and that travel costs are covered in addition to access to paid sick days.

• Revisit practices to support pregnant employees who travel for work to states where abortion is illegal and may need to access emergency care. 

• Close the gap on abortion access for workers who may not be eligible for regular benefits, such as hourly workers, contractors, and populations within the workforce already facing barriers to healthcare and financial security.

• Strengthen reproductive health benefits to go beyond the minimum requirements of the Affordable Care Act when it comes to contraception, health screenings, and other prevention measures. 

• Communicate the benefits and other programs available to help workers access time-sensitive and confidential healthcare inclusive of reproductive healthcare as well as LGBTQ+ care.

The Pro Repro Playbook provides free guidance to companies on developing and implementing benefits to support the reproductive health of their employees.

2. Advocate 

At the national level, support codifying abortion access and let members of Congress know that employers oppose national bans. Employers can make the case to officeholders to support efforts to reduce barriers to reproductive healthcare as a matter of worker wellbeing as well as implications for regulatory authority, interstate travel, and commerce.

• Engage officeholders about the onerous impact on employers and the chilling effect that restrictions have on the state business climate. Case examples include Indiana, South Carolina, Ohio and North Carolina.

• Work in coalition with metro, state, and national business associations to counter the advancement of abortion restrictions by officeholders before proposals are advanced.

• Sign amicus briefs to signal an understanding of the greater stakes. Case in point, the pharmaceutical and biotech industry took a historic stance against a targeted effort to revoke access to an FDA-approved abortion medication given the potential to overturn the regulatory framework industries rely upon. Medication abortion accounts for more than half of all abortion care in the US and is also used to manage miscarriage. Cases are still pending that will determine medication access.

• Join Don’t Ban Equality, a platform that enables companies to work with industry peers across the private sector as well as other influential organizations on the workforce impact and economic costs of abortion restrictions. 

3. Align Political Contributions

Align—once and for all—public positions and political influence with operational and workforce policies. Abortion access is now legislated in every state, and a company’s public and internal commitments to worker health and well-being as well as gender equity may directly contradict political contributions and influence. This contradiction will increasingly become untenable for workers, customers, and other stakeholders. 

• Review and update the criterion for making political contributions and test what giving preference to candidates and organizations that support abortion access could look like. Be prepared to defend your position. 

• Measure internally how well the company’s (and any PAC) political contributions align with stated values and public policy priorities. Publicly report out metrics measuring this alignment, and approaches to reducing misalignment. 

• If reallocation is not possible, commit to educating recipients of political donations on how their positions on social issues harm the workforce and business environments. Appeal to them to reprioritize their agendas. 

4. Audit Corporate Matching and Workplace Giving 

Do not authorize corporate matching or workplace giving for anti-abortion organizations that infringe on reproductive health access. Consider criteria for organizations that receive corporate donations, including passive tools such as matching and payroll deduction.

5. Make Abortion Access Part of Event and Office Site Selection 

Some corporate travel planners and HR leaders are quietly working to address a growing set of risks to employees. Companies are enacting travel policies that restrict or are acknowledging the risks of hosting events in places where abortion is illegal or inaccessible. Increased restrictions are prompting new questions relevant to site selection, including access to care and treatment for workers facing urgent health crises, let alone new threats of invasive law enforcement action.

6. Minimize Data Collection in Products and Services 

The collection of user data by companies and tracking of users’ online activity about reproductive health creates significant risks to seekers and providers of healthcare services and unnecessary reputational risk for employers. Among the key actions companies can take include:

• Undertake human rights due diligence to identify risks to sexual and reproductive health that may be associated with the development or use of new or existing platforms, devices, products / product features. Companies need to consider state restrictions on reproductive health when deciding on the location of offices, data centers, or other assets that might give a state jurisdiction over the user data. 

• Apply best practice privacy principles, such as data minimization, purpose limitations, purpose-based data retention, and user transparency and control. 

• Deploy end-to-end encryption on private messaging services. 

• Set default privacy settings to the highest level of privacy protection. Privacy protections should be based on an opt-out model, not an opt-in model. 

7. Support Civic Engagement through Voting and Elections 

A touchstone of American Democracy is safe and fair elections as well as robust engagement by all communities nationwide.

• Provide paid time off to vote even if it is not required in all states where the company operates. Workers shouldn’t have to choose between earning a paycheck and voting. 

• Recruit and recognize employees serving as poll workers and poll monitors as part of workplace volunteerism. This is fundamental to how democracy functions in America. 

• Engage with officeholders to express support for elections through investment and reform to meet administrative challenges.

The fall of Roe added to an already tumultuous landscape, leaving employers to navigate an increasingly complex patchwork of new and proposed restrictions. The costs of insufficient action become more tangible while the impact of this ongoing public health crisis accelerates.

BSR’s Center for Business and Social Justice works with a network of civil society partners and experts in reproductive health to provide actionable guidance to business. All BSR members can contact the Center for specific inquiries. 

Primers | Thursday August 18, 2022

10 Human Rights Priorities for the Luxury Sector

Preview

Human rights are inherent to all human beings. They are defined and established in more than 80 international legal instruments and define the fundamental protections of human dignity, needs, and freedoms, such as food, housing, privacy, personal security, and democratic participation. Since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948, the responsibility to protect human rights has primarily fallen on governments. Beginning in the early 2000s, however, it became increasingly clear that the freedoms enshrined in the framework could also be violated—and promoted—by the private sector. In 2011, the UN Human Rights Council unanimously endorsed the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), the first international instrument to assign companies the responsibility to respect human rights.

The Guiding Principles state that companies must refrain from negatively impacting rights even when governments are failing to create or enforce necessary laws and that those victims of corporate abuses must have access to an effective remedy.

As part of this responsibility, the Guiding Principles require companies to actively identify and manage the negative human rights impacts that they may cause directly and those to which they contribute through their business practices and relationships. There are several key actions a company can take as part of this due diligence cycle: conduct a human rights assessment to determine which potential human rights impacts are most salient to their business, develop and publish a human rights policy to communicate expectations to stakeholders and business partners, ensure they have robust stakeholder engagement processes in place to support ongoing monitoring of potential or actual impacts and proactive action or remedy.

This issue brief identifies the 10 most relevant, urgent, and probable human rights impacts for businesses operating in the luxury sector. The information here is gathered from BSR’s direct engagement with luxury sector companies, as well as our 30 years of experience helping companies in all sectors manage their human rights risks.

The luxury sector comprises a wide range of businesses and activities, from manufacturing, including raw material production and processing, retailing, and distribution, to marketing and advertising of luxury goods. These include jewelry and watches, apparel, accessories, and eyewear.

While each of these different business activities will have its own human rights profile and challenges, this brief highlights universal risks for companies operating in the luxury sector. This spans the design and concept stage, sourcing and mining of raw materials ranging from cotton to exotic animal skins to gemstones, processing and manufacturing, packaging, and retailing, and disposal and destruction of unsold inventory, encompassing all the workers and local communities involved.

Primers | Tuesday August 23, 2022

Human Rights Priorities for the Beauty and Personal Care Sector

Preview

Human rights are inherent to all human beings. They are defined and established in more than 80 international legal instruments and define the fundamental protections of human dignity, needs, and freedoms, such as food, housing, privacy, personal security, and democratic participation. Since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948, the responsibility to protect human rights has primarily fallen on governments. Beginning in the early 2000s, however, it became increasingly clear that the freedoms enshrined in the framework could also be violated—and promoted—by the private sector. In 2011, the UN Human Rights Council unanimously endorsed the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), the first international instrument to assign companies the responsibility to respect human rights.

The Guiding Principles state that companies must refrain from negatively impacting rights even when governments are failing to create or enforce necessary laws; and that victims of corporate abuses must have access to effective remedy.

As part of this responsibility, the Guiding Principles require companies to actively identify and manage the negative human rights impacts that they may cause directly, and those to which they contribute through their business practices and relationships. There are several key actions a company can take as part of this due diligence cycle: conduct a human rights assessment to determine which potential human rights impacts are most salient to their business; develop and publish a human rights policy to clearly communicate expectations to stakeholders and business partners; ensure they have robust stakeholder engagement processes in place to support ongoing monitoring of potential or actual impacts and proactive action or remedy.

This issue brief identifies the most relevant, urgent, and probable human rights impacts for businesses operating in the beauty and personal care sector. The information here is gathered from BSR’s direct engagement with beauty and personal care sector companies, as well as our 30 years of experience helping companies in all sectors manage their human rights risks.

The beauty and personal care sector comprises a wide range of businesses and activities, from manufacturing, retailing, and distribution to marketing and advertising of beauty and cosmetic products (such as makeup, fragrances, skincare, haircare, and toiletries). The sector is spread across a wide range of different businesses including specialty stores, pharmacies, and supermarkets, among others. While each of these different business activities will have its own human rights profile and challenges, this brief highlights universal risks for companies operating in the beauty and personal care sector.

Primers | Tuesday August 23, 2022

10 Human Rights Priorities for the Food, Beverage, and Agriculture Sector

Preview

Human rights are inherent to all human beings. They are defined and established in more than 80 international legal instruments and define the fundamental protections of human dignity, needs, and freedoms, such as food, housing, privacy, personal security, and democratic participation. Since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948, the responsibility to protect human rights has primarily fallen on governments. Beginning in the early 2000s, however, it became increasingly clear that the freedoms enshrined in the framework could also be violated—and promoted—by the private sector.

In 2011, the UN Human Rights Council unanimously endorsed the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), the first international instrument to assign companies the responsibility to respect human rights.

The Guiding Principles state that companies must refrain from negatively impacting rights even when governments are failing to create or enforce necessary laws and that those victims of corporate abuses must have access to effective remedy.

As part of this responsibility, the Guiding Principles require companies to actively identify and manage the negative human rights impacts that they may cause directly and those to which they contribute through their business practices and relationships. There are several key actions a company can take as part of this due diligence cycle: conduct a human rights assessment to determine which potential human rights impacts are most salient to their business, develop and publish a human rights policy to communicate expectations to stakeholders and business partners, ensure they have robust stakeholder engagement processes in place to support ongoing monitoring of potential or actual impacts and proactive action or remedy.

This issue brief identifies the 10 most relevant, urgent, and probable human rights impacts for businesses operating in the food, beverage, and agriculture (FBA) sector. The information here is gathered from BSR’s direct engagement with FBA companies, as well as our 30 years of experience helping companies in all sectors manage their human rights risks. This sector spans all aspects of the global food system, from agriculture to transport, packaging, and retail. It nourishes the world’s population and connects economies in an expansive global value chain.

Yet, as with all complex industries and supply chains, the FBA sector has adverse impacts on people and the environment across the value chain—from farm level to retail and everything in between. While global food systems proved to be resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic effects exacerbated inequalities and acute food insecurity for the most vulnerable, demonstrating the structural nature of some of these adverse impacts.¹

The FBA supply chain is also responsible for 21–37 percent of GHG emissions every year, which means the sector is a key contributor to climate change.² As the world’s population is expected to grow to 10 billion by 2050, the demand for food will intensify, which may further strain the global food system and exacerbate existing inequalities, human rights risks, and environmental degradation. Understanding the human rights risks and impacts across this complex and necessary system will help those companies within the various industries that make up the FBA sector begin to unpack what contributions they can make to mitigating the negative impacts and seizing on opportunities to advance human rights for all.