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Blog | Sunday January 17, 2021

Six Steps to Prevent and Address Child Labor in the Palm Oil Industry

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A recently published investigative report by the Associated Press has brought attention to the issue of child labor, which continues to afflict the palm oil industry.

Unfortunately, the problem is not new—and neither are efforts to put an end to it. Over the years, leading agriculture companies have set ambitious targets (both individually and jointly) to eradicate child labor. However, child labor is a complex issue, and its root causes, such as high rates of poverty and lack of educational infrastructure, require holistic multi-stakeholder approaches and solutions. Furthermore, the complexity of global agricultural commodity supply chains mean that human rights issues are often concealed beyond tier 1 due to a lack of transparency. This can oftentimes make it challenging to identify and address potential and actual harms to children.

Nevertheless, there are individual policies and management practices that palm oil companies need to introduce and implement in their operations to prevent child labor from occurring. Palm oil companies should also ensure that proper child labor remediation processes are developed and carried out if there are instances of child labor identified in their own and/or suppliers’ operations.

To this end, BSR supported the development of agribusiness group Wilmar’s Child Protection Implementation Manual, in collaboration with global buyers. The manual is intended to guide Wilmar’s suppliers and contractors in Indonesia toward a better understanding of the steps required to protect and safeguard children’s rights, and it is also applicable to the wider agriculture industry.

Underpinned by the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and other international standards, the manual provides a guide for Wilmar and its Indonesian suppliers to establish and implement policies related to safeguarding and protecting children from child labor and other forms of abuse in their operations as well as remedial actions.

Based on UNICEF’s Child Safeguarding Toolkit for Business, Wilmar’s manual outlines six practical due diligence steps and preventative measures that palm oil companies can take to protect and safeguard children in their operations and supply chains:

1. Conduct a child protection risk assessment to understand how a company’s activities, employees, or representatives pose risks to children either through a standalone self-assessment or integrated within its own risk or impact assessment process while engaging with external child rights experts.
2. Conduct a gap analysis of existing policies and practices to understand the extent to which child protection has been integrated into the company’s risk assessment and management processes.
3. Develop a policy commitment to set out the company’s responsibility to respect human rights, including children’s rights. The commitment should be approved at the highest level of the business, embedded across all operations, and communicated internally and externally.
4. Develop an implementation plan detailing how the Child Protection policy will be operationalized and embedded within the company.
5. Establish a reporting structure to receive and respond to reports regarding the welfare of a child. This reporting structure can either build on existing company policies and reporting structures or standalone structures that are solely related to child protection issues.
6. Provide guidance for employees on how to take appropriate actions when concerns about a child’s safety and welfare are raised using the company’s reporting structure and grievance channels.

The manual is also aligned with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)’s Guidance on Child Rights for Palm Oil Producers to strengthen child rights protection while further improving compliance with the RSPO certification standard. The RSPO guidance aims to improve the livelihoods of children and their communities while providing support for interventions and to minimize potential adverse impacts.

In the event that instances of child labor are found—even when hiring policies and practices, age verification, and workplace assessments are in place—Wilmar’s manual also provides guidance on how to develop a child labor remediation plan.

A remediation plan should include a set of operational principles to guide a company’s responses on a case-by-case basis according to the best interests of the child. Supporting a child’s education or employment for their parent/guardian are just a few of the remedial actions that companies can take once the child is removed from work while keeping their best interests at the center of all decision-making.

In order to monitor implementation and impact of the manual, BSR will continue to work with Wilmar to conduct a pilot of the Child Protection Implementation Manual with a selected supplier in Indonesia at the operational level. Together, we will test and refine the manual’s practical applicability, build supplier capacity to address child protection issues in palm oil estates in Indonesia, and subsequently share key lessons learned with Wilmar’s supplier base in Indonesia. We hope that these practices will be widely adopted across the palm oil industry.

For more information on Wilmar’s Child Protection Implementation Manual and any questions about the next phase of work, or to learn more about BSR’s work on business and human rights, including children’s rights, please reach out to connect with our team.

Blog | Tuesday January 12, 2021

2021: Optimism and Resolve for the Decisive Decade

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Barely a week after the world began to put 2020—and its long list of challenges, disruptions, and heartache—in the rearview mirror with some cautious optimism, an attack on American democracy has shaken the world, leaving many of us anxiously pondering whether 2021 will just be more of the same.

But as disruptive as 2020 was, and as troubling as our first week of 2021 has been, we cannot afford to lose sight of the deeper structural changes that not only continue to reshape our world, but also continue to accelerate. We opened 2020 by talking about the “decisive decade” and the need to make the vision of the Sustainable Development Goals a reality. Much has changed in the last year. That objective has not.

Indeed, it is clearer than ever that sustainable business is both a core driver of strategic advantage and an essential pathway to a just and sustainable—and resilient—world. It is time to turn from responding to unexpected disruptions to the solutions needed to create an economy that delivers truly inclusive and sustainable prosperity.

Multiple forces are converging to make sustainability a higher priority for business and the world. We know from the past year that investors are deploying capital to companies with serious plans to address climate and other core sustainability objectives. Social acceptance of new technologies and business models—including the changing nature of work itself—is more important than ever. Long-standing structural discrimination must be dismantled, not only in business but in the societies in which business operates. And, at a time when global poverty has grown for the first time in decades, when income inequality has increased, and where structural changes to the economy have displaced many people, it is essential that business generates economic opportunity where it is most needed.

We called on business throughout 2020 to “meet the moment and build the future.” This call to action remains essential for successful business, thriving societies, and a healthy natural environment.

As we turn to this new year, it is time to turn ambition to action, enabling our member companies to meet both business and sustainability objectives. In the year ahead, we will be focusing on three broad areas: (1) business transformation to meet ESG objectives, (2) decisive climate action to translate commitments into real change, and (3) creating an economy that is truly inclusive.

Business Transformation to Meet ESG Objectives

Business transformation is essential to meet the challenges of the decisive decade. We are working with our members to establish resilient business strategies with ambitious sustainability goals and, crucially, the actions needed to make these objectives a reality. These times also demand fundamental change. To that end, we are also working with companies to help build a 21^st-century social contract based on principles that deliver long-term value for all stakeholders, economic and social mobility and security, climate justice, and the development of new technologies based on human rights principles, all based on principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion. All these efforts are supported by foresight from our Sustainable Futures Lab, which enables companies to position themselves to anticipate and shape change in tumultuous times.

Decisive Climate Action to Translate Commitments into Real Change

On climate, 2021 will be a year in which business action pivots more decisively from ambition to action. BSR’s offerings will support this shift in three high-impact areas. We will work with companies to build resilience to climate risks and their social impacts through effective implementation of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), including scenarios to guide decision-making. We will ramp up our efforts to drive Scope 3 emissions reductions through collaborations like Transform to Net Zero and one-on-one projects with our members. And in 2021, we will create a global green freight platform that harmonizes disparate collaborations under a singular compelling program, solidifying BSR’s position as the global leader in clean freight. We will also continue to work as a proud coalition partner in We Mean Business, to help the business community speak with a powerful, unified voice in support of decisive climate action and policy.

Creating an Economy That Is Truly Inclusive

People are at the center of all BSR efforts to help companies build back better and create a more inclusive economy. In 2021, BSR will help to shape the next decade of the business and human rights agenda, including numerous efforts to work with companies in multiple sectors to ensure that new technologies and business models are built on a foundation of respect for human rights. We are actively committed to defining a vision for business leadership on DEI and to ensuring that the spate of commitments made in 2020 results in systemic, lasting change. We continue to work through HERproject and other efforts to ensure that workers—especially women—in supply chains, who have been hit so hard by COVID-19, can thrive and access livelihoods essential to their well-being.

Indeed, it is clearer than ever that sustainable business is both a core driver of strategic advantage and an essential pathway to a just and sustainable—and resilient—world.

We hope this agenda is as ambitious as our times demand. We are pursuing many other efforts with you so that we can make 2021 a year of accelerated achievement—and we welcome your continued engagement to make this vision a reality.

Last year created great pain and disruption. Saying otherwise would be insensitive in the extreme. But the experiences and impacts of 2020 also provide reasons for optimism and resolve.

As we undertake these activities, we are confident that businesses embracing this agenda will not only position themselves to thrive amidst great change, but they will also deliver the kind of solutions and opportunity that are essential for human progress. We invite you to join us in this effort, as we work with you to generate resilient business strategies that truly meet the moment and build the future. 

Blog | Thursday January 7, 2021

Business and the Renewal of American Democracy

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The horrific storming of the U.S. Capitol building this week is yet another “shocked but not surprised” event during the dwindling days of Donald Trump’s presidency. Historians will have much to assess from this tragic period but there are numerous lessons for business leaders to consider today.

There can be no doubt that all American institutions—including business—must engage in very serious soul-searching about the factors that enabled the behaviors that reached their apotheosis in mob violence against the Peoples’ House, the U.S. Capitol.

Let me start by saying that we all know that there are very good reasons why businesses, and business leaders, do not weigh in on all, or even most, political questions. We know that most CEOs, whatever their political views, long for a time when they can focus primarily on their businesses, and leave political questions to elected officials.

But this is not such a time.

It is time for business leaders to stand for rule of law in the United States.

It is time for business leaders to call for democratic reforms – not an ersatz commission to explore non-existent election fraud. It is urgent that we restore the smooth functioning of government, such that voter suppression ends and one person, one vote is more than a slogan.

It is time for business leaders to renew their call for equitable law enforcement. As so many have noted, the racial disparities in policing were—again—tragically clear when only scattered arrests occurred after the Capitol was stormed. The contrast with the brutal manner in which protestors for racial justice were treated outside of the White House last summer could not be starker. 

It is time for business leaders to forcefully push back on the many forms of denialism – election denial, vaccine denial, COVID-19 denial, and yes, climate denial, all of which have poisoned American politics and result in death.   

And yes, it is time for business leaders to call out Donald Trump, by name, to ensure that he can do no further damage.  The National Association of Manufacturers—which no one would place on the left of the political spectrum—has called for consideration of removing Donald Trump from office under the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. More should follow.

It is also time to stop supporting those who enabled the slow and steady rot we have seen the past four years. This means ceasing contributions to those officeholders who challenged the clear and legitimate result of the 2020 Presidential election. (The bankruptcy of America’s campaign finance system was laid bare yesterday as fundraising solicitations on the basis of election challenges were issued even as the hordes were defiling the halls of the U.S. Congress.) This also means not doing business with media outlets that have allowed outright lies and falsehoods to pollute the political discourse in the U.S.

And it is also time for business to think hard about its role in enabling the hijacking of the U.S. government over the past four years. To the degree the business community stood by to take tax cuts they knew would not generate job growth, but would exacerbate income inequality, that is a big problem. To the degree campaign contributions kept flowing to candidates and elected officials who were knowingly misleading the American public, that is a big problem. To the degree that business leaders did not demand further action to address systemic racism, that is a big problem.

As Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote in The New York Times the morning after the events at the U.S. Capitol, business is all about accountability—and we deserve more of it today than ever. When systems fail, a review is conducted to understand what went wrong and how to make fixes that are strong and lasting. That is what great business leaders do. Today, the story is an American one—but it applies to every global business we work with around the world as well.

The failings of the political system were on vivid, heart-wrenching display on January 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C. Change will not come if it is debated only in the halls of the U.S. Congress or on social media. Change must also be debated in every boardroom, so that business leaders rise to the occasion, not only to prevent further damage over the next 13 days, but also so that the necessary renewal of American democracy is a high priority for American business.

Blog | Thursday January 7, 2021

Seven Questions to Determine a Company’s Connections to Human Rights Abuses

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How far must a company go to address adverse human rights impacts with which they are involved?

The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights provide a roadmap for operationalizing business respect for human rights, calling on companies to identify, prevent, mitigate, and remedy actual and potential human rights abuses.

The actions that a company must take to prevent, mitigate, and remedy adverse human rights impacts—what the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) call “appropriate actions”—depend on the company’s connection to that impact. The UNGPs provide a framework for assessing this, often called the cause/contribute/directly linked framework. According to the UNGPs, the appropriate actions that companies must take to prevent and mitigate human rights abuses will vary according to “[w]hether the business enterprise causes or contributes to an adverse impact, or whether it is involved solely because the impact is directly linked to its operations, products or services by a business relationship.” The determination of appropriate actions also varies according to “the extent of [the company’s] leverage in addressing the adverse impact,” as indicated by Principle 19.

Assessing attribution—that is, whether the business has caused, contributed, or is directly linked to an adverse impact through their business relationships—is the first step toward determining appropriate actions to prevent and mitigate human rights abuses and provide remedy where relevant. In fact, the forward-looking nature of human rights assessments, followed by appropriate actions to prevent and mitigate human rights abuses, is one of the most powerful tools companies have available to ensure respect for human rights.

Practically speaking, how can companies determine whether they have caused, contributed, or are directly linked to an adverse impact through their business relationships? In a white paper that looks at an OECD National Contact Point (NCP) case from Australia (Equitable Cambodia & Inclusive Development International v. ANZ Group & ANZ Royal), BSR Senior Advisor Jonathan Drimmer and Novartis Head of Human Rights and former BSR Human Rights Director Peter Nestor explore seven questions to help companies determine their connection to negative impacts, including:

1. Did the company’s actions on their own cause human rights harm?
2. Did the company facilitate, enable, or incentivize other parties to cause harm?
3. Could the company have known about or foreseen the potential harm?
4. How specific was the connection between the company’s operations and the harm?
5. Did the company take steps that likely could have prevented the harm from occurring?
6. Did the company directly benefit from the negative impact?
7. Do stakeholders and rightsholders believe that the company caused, contributed to, or was directly linked to the harm, or should otherwise provide or contribute to remedy?

These questions are framed through a retrospective lens of attribution to help determine whether and how a company should remedy human rights harm they have caused or contributed to in the past. However, in the context of forward-looking human rights due diligence, these questions can be reframed to identify appropriate actions to prevent and mitigate potential adverse human rights impacts that may occur in the future. Thus, the seven questions can be rephrased into forward-looking diligence questions as follows:

1. Could the company’s actions themselves cause a negative impact?
2. Is the company participating with others in activities that could lead to a negative impact on a collective or cumulative basis?
3. What inherent harms might be predicted based on past impacts connected to the company, sector, geography, or activity, or in the eyes of stakeholders?
4. How might the company’s own products, services, operations or sourcing activities, versus the activities of others, realistically cause harms?
5. What leverage does the company have to prevent potential impacts it believes could practically occur, and has that leverage been used in a reasonable, tailored, and specific way in light of those risks?
6. How might the company benefit from the potential negative risks identified, if they are not mitigated or prevented?
7. Do stakeholders and rightsholders believe that the company may cause, contribute to, or be directly linked to the harm, or that the company should otherwise provide or contribute to remedy for potential harms?

A worksheet to guide this forward-looking analysis is available as well, and we think this will be especially useful for BSR member companies undertaking assessments of their potential future impacts.

The answers to these questions can help a company develop an approach to prevent, mitigate, and establish mechanisms for remedy before adverse human rights impacts happen. They can also help companies in evaluating their due diligence exercises when they must later assess a connection to a negative impact. And when a harm is in fact tied to a company’s activities, they can help determine the responsible and appropriate actions the company might take to remedy this harm.

For more information, please reach out to the BSR human rights team.

Reports | Thursday January 7, 2021

Seven Questions to Help Determine When a Company Should Remedy Human Rights Harm under the UNGPs

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How far must a company go to address adverse human rights impacts with which they are involved?

The actions that a company must take to prevent, mitigate, and remedy adverse human rights impacts—what the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) call “appropriate actions”—depend on the company’s connection to that impact. The UNGPs provide a framework for assessing this, often called the cause/contribute/directly linked framework. According to the UNGPs, the appropriate actions that companies must take to prevent and mitigate human rights abuses will vary according to “[w]hether the business enterprise causes or contributes to an adverse impact, or whether it is involved solely because the impact is directly linked to its operations, products or services by a business relationship.” The determination of appropriate actions also varies according to “the extent of [the company’s] leverage in addressing the adverse impact,” as indicated by Principle 19.

Assessing attribution—that is, whether the business has caused, contributed, or is directly linked to an adverse impact through their business relationships—is the first step toward determining appropriate actions to prevent and mitigate human rights abuses and provide remedy where relevant. In fact, the forward-looking nature of human rights assessments, followed by appropriate actions to prevent and mitigate human rights abuses, is one of the most powerful tools companies have available to ensure respect for human rights.

Practically speaking, how can companies determine whether they have caused, contributed, or are directly linked to an adverse impact through their business relationships? A new white paper from BSR Senior Advisor Jonathan Drimmer and Novartis Head of Human Rights and former BSR Human Rights Director Peter Nestor explores seven questions to help companies determine their connection to negative impacts and how to reframe these questions to identify appropriate actions to prevent and mitigate potential adverse human rights impacts that may occur in the future.

Blog | Monday December 21, 2020

One Year On: A Human Rights Review of the Oversight Board

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Facebook makes decisions to take down, leave up, or restore content every day. Some of these decisions can be very challenging, with strong arguments for either removing or leaving up the content. Many users can disagree with these decisions, and millions are appealed each year.

With over two billion users worldwide, it has become increasingly important that Facebook does not make these content moderation decisions alone. For this reason, the Oversight Board was launched in 2020 to help Facebook answer some of the most difficult questions around what to take down, what to leave up, and why.

It is also crucial that these decisions respect internationally recognized human rights standards—which is why Facebook commissioned an independent human rights review from BSR to inform the Oversight Board’s creation. In our human rights review, which was published in full last December, we made 34 recommendations for how the governance and operations of the Oversight Board could be made consistent with human rights-based approaches, principles, standards, and methodologies.

Earlier this month, the Oversight Board announced its first cases. Alongside this key milestone, the Oversight Board commissioned BSR to undertake an independent gap analysis to compare the final Oversight Board charter, bylaws, and operating procedures with our original recommendations. This gap analysis is being published today.

The Oversight Board is unlike anything previously created by a company—to our knowledge, no company in any industry has ever established an oversight mechanism with binding decision-making power. Moreover, while efforts to provide access to remedy in other industries are typically designed to meet the needs of a bounded number of rightsholders, based in clearly defined geographical areas and speaking a limited number of languages, the Oversight Board is designed to meet the needs of billions of rightsholders, who could be anywhere in the world and who may speak any language.

The original BSR human rights review of the Oversight Board addressed these twin challenges of novelty and scale by acknowledging the significant operational challenges the Oversight Board will face and the reality that lessons will be learned over time.

One year after our original review, our newly published gap analysis shows that the Oversight Board is making good progress on this long-term journey. Specifically, we conclude that of BSR’s original 34 recommendations, 17 are benefiting from good progress, nine are benefiting from partial progress, five are not yet determined, and three are not yet addressed. We make the following observations:

• Taken in combination, the Oversight Board’s governing documents provide an increasingly valuable framework for a taking human rights-based approach to content decisions. The documents could provide additional clarity with more direct reference to the International Bill of Human Rights and other relevant international human rights instruments.
• The commitments to transparency in the Oversight Board’s governing documents are strong, such as the pledge to communicate the Board’s decisions publicly and publishing an annual report with a review of human rights impacts. These will be important channels for stakeholders to track and review progress on human rights over time once the Oversight Board begins operating.
• Many of BSR's recommendations focused on the Oversight Board being accessible, predictable, and equitable, and the true judge of this will not be this gap analysis but the perspectives of stakeholders with direct experience engaging with the Oversight Board. For this reason, once the Oversight Board has been operational for a longer period, we recommend a progress review using methods that involve meaningful engagement with affected stakeholders, especially individuals from groups or populations that may be at heightened risk of becoming vulnerable or marginalized. We believe it will be especially important for this review to consider support users may need (such as a “user advocate”) to navigate the Oversight Board process effectively and equitably.

While BSR’s recommendations are specific to the Oversight Board, we continue to hope that they will provide considerable value to other companies, civil society organizations, governments, and intergovernmental organizations seeking to define human rights-based approaches to content governance, accountability, and access to remedy.

BSR recognizes the Oversight Board’s commitment to transparency about its progress on human rights, and we look forward to further engagement as further insights are gained from real life practice.

Blog | Wednesday December 16, 2020

How Business Can Support Survivors of Human Trafficking

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The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the plight of many people around the world who were already living and working in slavery-like conditions and has made many more susceptible to such exploitation. For companies with extensive operations and supply chains, the risk of human trafficking taking place within their value chain is on the rise, an issue the Global Business Coalition Against Human Trafficking (GBCAT) and many other anti-trafficking initiatives have elevated to the business community throughout the year. In response, many organizations are partnering with the private sector to help prevent, identify, mitigate, and address human trafficking in business operations and supply chains around the world.  

However, companies have an additional, powerful lever they can further deploy to aid survivors of human trafficking in their recovery: employment. As employers, companies are uniquely positioned to offer quality training and stable incomes. Vocational training and good jobs enable survivors to better build the skills and resources they need to achieve financial security and long-term safety. Doing so also helps survivors to overcome socioeconomic vulnerabilities, reducing the likelihood that they or their dependents will be exploited in the future.  

GBCAT is launching a new resource, A Guide for Business on Empowerment and Employment of Survivors of Human Trafficking, to inform companies on how they can support the long-term recovery of survivors of human trafficking. This guide describes the needs, experiences, and effects of human trafficking on survivors, actions business can take to empower and employ survivors, and explains the types of organizations that companies can look to for partnership support, including real-world case examples. For businesses interested in engaging on the topic, the guide indicates criteria to look for when assessing survivor-support organizations for partnership, outlines the elements of a strong survivor employment approach, and key considerations for business when deciding whether and how to intentionally integrate survivors into their workforce.

The Guide points to two opportunities for business to proactively support survivors of human trafficking on their journey towards recovery: 

1. Support the organizations that aid survivors in their long-term recovery. Support can be offered pro bono or through financial means or partnership. The guide describes the three types of organizations which support survivors, recognizing that some organizations play multiple roles.
   • Immediate Needs Providers (INP): Entities that provide basic and urgent needs to survivors, such as medical care, shelter, food, and trauma counseling, helping survivors to heal so that they are successful in continuing lives on their own terms.
   • Vocational Training Organizations (VTO): Entities which equip survivors with the technical and professional development skills that enable them to find safe, sustainable, and well-paying jobs.
   • Social Enterprises and Businesses: Entities which offer safe and long-term employment, paving the way for survivors’ financial well-being, work experience, and transferrable skills.
2. Employ survivors of human trafficking within your business and/or the business of a trusted partner. In partnership with local INPs and VTOs, businesses can provide ready and qualified survivors with safe and stable jobs.

Businesses that have programs to address human trafficking risks, particularly in geographies where the prevalence is high, can demonstrate that their efforts to support the empowerment and employment of survivors are helping to prevent individuals and their dependents from being exploited or re-exploited. Empowering survivors and the local organizations that support them also enables businesses to improve the socioeconomic development of the communities in which they operate, thereby benefiting all community members, including, most importantly, survivors and their families.

Businesses looking to learn more about supporting survivors of human trafficking can download the free guide here and reach out to the team to learn more.

The Global Business Coalition Against Human Trafficking (GBCAT) is a business-led initiative committed to preventing and reducing the incidence of human trafficking and other forms of slavery in business operations and global supply chains and supporting survivors of exploitation. See www.gbcat.org for more information.

Reports | Wednesday December 16, 2020

Empowerment and Employment of Survivors of Human Trafficking: A Business Guide

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Safe and sustainable employment is one of the most effective ways to prevent the exploitation of vulnerable individuals and the re-exploitation of survivors of human trafficking and other forms of slavery. As employers, companies can offer quality training and stable incomes to survivors of human trafficking to enable them to better build the skills and resources they need to achieve financial security and long-term safety.    

To inform companies on how to support survivors in their long-term recovery, BSR and the Global Business Coalition Against Human Trafficking (GBCAT) have developed a new business guide, Empowerment and Employment of Survivors of Human Trafficking. The guide describes the effects of human trafficking on survivors as well as survivors' needs and experiences; actions business can take to empower and employ survivors; and explains the types of organizations that companies can look to for partnership support, including real-world case examples. For businesses interested in engaging on the topic, the guide indicates criteria to look for when assessing survivor-support organizations for partnership, outlines the elements of a strong survivor employment approach, and key considerations for business when deciding whether and how to intentionally integrate survivors into their workforce.

The guide was developed through a literature review as well as interviews and consultations with over 20 organizations that support survivors of human trafficking. The guide also reflects inputs from experts, including survivor leaders from the Survivor Alliance and the National Survivor Network’s Resilient Voices leadership program. This Guide is intended for individuals working in global business departments such as human resources, diversity and inclusion, and community engagement. Personnel in departments that oversee the business’ approach to human trafficking issues (e.g. human rights, public policy, legal, or sustainability) or those who regularly engage with suppliers and contractors (e.g. supply chain or procurement) may also benefit. 

Businesses seeking to learn more about supporting survivors of human trafficking can download the free guide here and reach out to the team to learn more.

Blog | Tuesday December 15, 2020

COVID-19 and Beyond: Technology, Responsible Decision Making, and Public Health Emergencies

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In May 2020, a Korean man visited a series of bars and clubs in the Itaewon district of Seoul. The next day, he tested positive for COVID-19 and the Korean Center for Disease Control and Prevention snapped into action. To find out who the man might have come into contact with they combined different data sources, including credit card transactions from the clubs and bars he visited and GPS locations of mobile phones in the area at the time.

Some of this information was shared with the media, who reported the places the man had visited and noted that some were gay clubs. This led to the LGBTIQ+ community being blamed for new COVID-19 cases and resulted in a surge in discrimination in a country where stigma against queer communities remains high.

The data collection and sharing practices of South Korea’s contact tracing system effectively risked the forced outing of LGBTIQ+ Koreans. One man told The Guardian, “My credit card company told me they passed on my payment information in the [Itaewon] district to authorities. I feel so trapped and hunted down. If I get tested, my company will most likely find out I’m gay. I’ll lose my job and face public humiliation.”

As countries around the world continue to battle outbreaks of COVID-19, South Korea has been held up as an example of how to successfully limit the spread of the pandemic. Widespread technology and data use, from contact tracing to quarantine enforcement, has been a key part of this success. Many other countries have taken note and attempted to follow suit by integrating technology into their own responses. While this can be a win for public health and safety, the example above shows how technology and data use for pandemic response can facilitate human rights violations.

In the current COVID-19 landscape, data and technology solutions can be used for many positive outcomes, such as facilitating “back to work” efforts, enhancing research into COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, and allowing the resumption of economic activity while also protecting public health. However, these uses may also result in the infringement of privacy rights, new forms of discrimination, and harm to vulnerable groups. Some governments are using the emergency as an excuse to expand their power, leading to concerns that initiatives launched to address COVID-19 could become permanent forms of state surveillance.

As the providers of data and digital infrastructure, technology companies are often central in public health emergency response efforts. A company's responsibility to respect human rights does not disappear during a public health emergency—indeed, the severity of adverse human rights impacts makes it even more essential that companies undertake robust human rights due diligence.

A company's responsibility to respect human rights does not disappear during a public health emergency—indeed, the severity of adverse human rights impacts makes it even more essential that companies undertake robust human rights due diligence.

With the support of Microsoft, BSR developed a human rights framework for responsible business decision-making before, during, and after public health emergencies. The framework is intended to be used as part of human rights due diligence to guide business decisions related to technology and data use in response to public health emergencies. It is informed by a combination of international human rights law related to states of emergency; allowable limitations and derogations of rights; relevant regulations, standards, and principles grounded in human rights; and lessons learned from past emergencies.

There are various human rights norms, principles, and standards that can help navigate a pathway through these dilemmas. For example, Article 4 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and its accompanying General Comment 29 allow governments to derogate from specified human rights during times of public emergency. The Siracusa Principles, adopted by the UN Economic and Social Council in 1984, describe limitations on the restriction of human rights that governments may apply for reasons of public health or national emergency.

However, three factors are challenging the application of these principles today:

• Changes in the digital realm: Ever-more-powerful computing, massive growth in the availability of data, increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence capabilities, and the centrality of digital infrastructure in everyday life have transformed the opportunities and risks associated with the use of digital technologies for public health.
• Increased involvement of companies: These principles were written for governments rather than companies, yet today the private sector has a far more significant role and power in the fulfillment of human rights than when the principles were drafted.
• Complexities of a global pandemic: These principles were not written to address the complexities of a global pandemic, and new insights about their implementation are emerging in real time.

In addition to the framework, BSR’s report, Decisions, Decisions, Decisions. Responsible Decision-Making Before, During, and After Public Health Emergencies, makes recommendations for companies to help ensure they take rights-respecting approaches to future public health emergencies. These can be summarized as follows:

Act: What Companies Should Do Internally

Although responding to public health emergencies requires swift action, companies must still carry out human rights due diligence to identify, prevent, and mitigate their human rights impacts and foresee the possible impacts of their decisions. The framework outlined in the report can help companies balance privacy rights with the protection of public health.

In their quest to take action, companies should also take care to avoid known pitfalls of applying technological solutions to social problems. This includes things like ensuring a tech or data-based solution is the right one for the given context, working with appropriate government authorities, creating effective escalation processes for handling government requests and contracts during times of emergency, and avoiding open-ended projects.

Enable: How Companies Should Work with Others

Public health solutions are seldom executed from start to finish by a single company. Businesses therefore must be as transparent as possible about the work they are doing and effectively engage with relevant stakeholders, including other companies in the industry and governments, who are often the customers for technology solutions. Through transparency and working with their peers, customers, and partners, companies can create more effective public health solutions and prevent scope creep or misuse.

Influence: How Companies Should Influence Public Policy

Governments have the obligation to protect human rights and therefore have an important role to play in ensuring that pandemic solutions do not unduly limit the rights of their citizens. As governments come to companies with various health emergency-related requests, companies have an opportunity to advocate for rights-respecting approaches and push back on requests that cross the line. Companies can also advocate for standards or regulations that provide clarity on the on the balance between privacy and public health, as well as stronger health data regulations that close loopholes related to non-traditional health data. When companies are required by a government to share data beyond what is necessary and proportionate, they should push back as much as possible.

When companies are required by a government to share data beyond what is necessary and proportionate, they should push back as much as possible.

Although COVID-19 may be the first truly global pandemic of the modern age, it certainly won’t be the last—in fact, experts expect that pandemics will become increasingly common, and business involvement in addressing them will only grow. However, while the public health crises of the future may share some features with the COVID-19 pandemic, they may vary in other ways too—such as different dynamics of transmission, severity of the illness, availability of treatment, and the necessary control measures—and it will be important to both take the lessons learned from COVID-19 and be able to apply them in different contexts.

Reports | Tuesday December 15, 2020

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions.

Preview

The COVID-19 public health emergency has surfaced important questions about the relationship between the right to privacy and other rights, such as the right to health, work, movement, expression, and assembly. Data and digital infrastructures can be used for many positive outcomes, such as facilitating “back to work” efforts, enhancing research into COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, and allowing the resumption of economic activity while also protecting public health.

However, these uses may also result in the infringement of privacy rights, new forms of discrimination, and harm to vulnerable groups. Some governments are using the emergency as an excuse to expand their power, leading to concerns that initiatives launched to address COVID-19 could become permanent forms of state surveillance.

As the providers of data, systems, and software, technology companies are often central in these public health emergency response efforts. For this reason, companies need to address the human rights risks associated with their involvement in disease response to avoid being connected to human rights violations.

This paper sets out the key elements of a human rights-based approach to the use of data and technology solutions during public health emergencies in today and tomorrow’s digital era, with a focus on the role of business and impacts to privacy.

These elements are primarily captured in a human rights-based decision-making framework for companies that can guide them through future public health emergencies. This framework can be found on page 5 of the report or can be downloaded separately.

COVID-19 is the first truly global pandemic of the modern age, but it won’t be the last. We hope this paper highlights lessons learned from COVID-19 that can be applied during the public health emergencies of the future.