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	The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights by Philippe Sion, Phil Bloomer Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, Humanity United   July 2021 will mark the 10th anniversary of the unanimous endorsement of the United Nations’ Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), which are meant to serve as global standards for preventing and addressing human rights abuses as the result of business activity.   Now, nearly a decade later, we are calling on corporate and financial actors to finally stop lining their pockets with profits from worker exploitation and to hold up their end of the deal. We are also calling on governments to continue providing the incentives – positive and punitive – that these businesses need in order to act.   While the corporate sector was reluctant to comply while the UNGPs were merely a moral obligation, these principles are increasingly becoming a financial obligation as well.   Fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic has put human rights in business back on the agenda around the world.   Just last month, UK food delivery service Deliveroo’s share price tumbled 30%, partly due to concerns for workers’ rights, and over the past year, the U.S. government has increased by 50-fold the amount of goods impounded at port suspected to have been produced with forced labor.   We cannot “build back better” from the tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic without human rights at the core of the discussion about the economies of our near future.   The UNGPs rest on three pillars: the state duty to protect human rights, the corporate responsibility to protect human rights, and access to remedy for victims of abuse if the first two pillars are violated.   While the UNGPs set an international legal standard that countries and companies around the world have officially endorsed, there has been no formal enforcement mechanism.   We’re now seeing mounting external pressure on companies to end the labor abuse and exploitation present in their own supply chains and to uphold the principles set forth ten years ago.   While customers are increasingly and rightfully repulsed by the abuse of workers, some investors who focus on Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance issues (ESG) are actively increasingly voting against complacent boards and their policies.   Another area of advancement is the development and adoption of so-called “mandatory human rights due diligence laws,” which impose on companies the legal obligation to prevent abuse in their operations and supply chains by identifying human rights risks and taking robust preventive action.   While most companies profiting from forced labor have yet to adequately address the issue, some businesses are making efforts in the right direction, while those that have refused are facing increasing pressure to take notice.   As the corporate law firm of White & Case put it in a recent letter to its clients, “companies face civil enforcement actions, potential criminal liability and reputational damage where slavery and forced labor is present in their supply chains"… “proactive development and implementation of policies and procedures to ensure supply chain integrity and mitigate enforcement risk are critical”.   White & Case do not frame this as a moral imperative, but a business one, and similarly, this is where governments can – and clearly must – do more.   The urgency for action is underscored by the due diligence scores in the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre’s most recent KnowTheChain corporate benchmark, which focuses on apparel and footwear fashion brands that collectively average a pitiful score of 41% in their efforts to tackle forced labor.   Company scoring ranges from just 3% and 5% (Shenzhou International and Prada) up to 89% (Lululemon). And only six of 37 companies report they involve workers in their assessments of the risk of forced labor in their supply chains, even though workers almost always have the greatest insight.   The majority of laggard companies face mounting risks from a variety of directions including prosecution under new laws in the EU, impounding of their imports in the U.S., and loss of market share and investors’ capital.   * This is an edited extract of commentary by Philippe Sion, Managing Director, Forced Labor & Human Trafficking, Humanity United, and Phil Bloomer, Executive Director, Business and Human Rights Resource Centre: http://humanityunited.org/ http://www.business-humanrights.org/en/   * Human rights: Holding businesses to account; Inside Geneva podcast: http://apple.co/3iajjoy Visit the related web page
	The future of global food governance by FIAN International   Oct. 2019   Today the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) will open for its 46th session, and celebrating 10 years since the 2009 reform. This reform is an important moment that heralded a new era of food governance, led by the people most affected by hunger and malnutrition.   However, 10 years later, as global food insecurity increases, it forces us to rethink our strategies and the role of the CFS in the global food governance picture. Nevertheless, as human rights are increasingly challenged at all levels, it is clear that now more than ever the CFS must be defended.   We are far away from reaching the ambitious targets set in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end hunger by 2030, and even more so we are missing a real, honest discussion on this failure.   If we do not identify the structural issues behind the human rights violations that contribute to food insecurity such as poverty and lack of living wage, discrimination, racism, eco-destruction and natural resources grabbing, as well as the problems resulting from the increasing role that corporate interests have in the public policy space, then we cannot identify real solutions.   A radical transformation of food systems is needed. To transition towards making them sustainable, healthy and just, in line with the right to food and nutrition.   Instead, corporations are offering 'solutions' that do not address structural injustices, but rather maintain and increase their control over food systems. The discussions ongoing now in the CFS represent an opportunity to find policy solutions to critical issues that have deep impacts on the realization of the right to food and nutrition for many people and communities globally.   The CFS is developing Guidelines on Food Systems and Nutrition, which is a unique opportunity to fully embrace the solutions put forward by those persons who are on the front line in the struggle for the right to food and nutrition. This includes, as a priority, agroecology.   Agroecology, as practiced and put forward by small-scale food producers, can and will work to protect communities and the climate, while targeting the structural issues that perpetuate rising rates of food insecurity.   However, these solutions cannot continue fall on deaf ears or be perceived as a threat to corporate interests, which have been increasingly taken as priority in many spaces across the UN.   Many States, UN agencies, and others blindly support multi-stakeholder initiatives-- which falsely place civil society and public interest on the same footing of the interests of corporate actors - and other forms of collaboration with the corporate sector as a necessary means for addressing food insecurity and malnutrition.   However, these initiatives, in fact, further increase and legitimize corporate influence in public policy making. This scenario undermines the human rights orientation of public policies and state accountability, and moves us ever further away from achieving the structural changes required for eliminating hunger.   In fact, the HLPE report of the CFS on Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships indicates that the empirical evidence on positive impacts of these partnerships towards eradicating hunger is scarce.   This trajectory which enables greater corporate capture is not the way out of the 'crisis' of food insecurity, democracy, and human rights that the world is facing. We need to have a serious discussion on real solutions, with participation of rights holders and those most affected by food insecurity. The CFS is the only space at international level to do this.   It is possible to build policies informed by the perspectives and experiences of those most marginalized groups and communities. The CFS has had a critical role in supporting and progressing the normative framework that supports the right to food and of small-scale food producers, which can be seen clearly in, for example, the Tenure Guidelines, Framework for Action for Food Insecurity in Protracted Crises, and Connecting Smallholders to Markets.   However, implementation is poor. FAO's commitment to spearhead implementation support of CFS policies is waning, as is their commitment to right to food. While at the same time this critical policy discourse is completely ignored by the ongoing discussions on the 2030 Agenda, which is concentrating resources and attention on policies, which fail to address human rights.   Monitoring and accountability remains critical to maintaining the legitimacy of the CFS and the decisions that it takes. We are progressively taking steps to further this process, but it remains fundamental to ensure that the policies emerging from this space are taken up by states, and that the CFS continues to create the space to have a critical dialogue on their use and implementation.   However, it is also up to us, as civil society, to take full responsibility and ownership over the outcomes that emerge from the CFS. We do not have to wait for permission to advocate for the implementation of policies that ensure our human rights.   http://bit.ly/2OeVrBa http://www.righttofoodandnutrition.org/state-right-food-and-nutrition-report-2019 http://hilalelver.org/about/know-your-right-to-food/ Visit the related web page
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