Reflections on Realising a Next Generation of Trade

Halina Ward, Senior Associate, International Institute for Environment and Development

‘Next generation trade’ was a wonderful mix. The stellar line-up of leaders, thinkers and doers including Mary Robinson, Sharan Burrow, YF Agah and Nazma Akter was able to make big ideas more accessible, and therefore more thought-provoking as a call for engagement, to an audience of business and human rights practitioners. From border adjustment tax to tackle the competitive impacts of progressive climate change mitigation policies; the potential for the World Trade Organization’s dispute settlement mechanism Appellate Body to grind to a halt; through to the trade policy implications of big data; trade policy was a thread in every session. Sometimes it was only faintly discernable, because in this ‘framing’ conference it was impossible to stay away from larger questions around the imperative for a ‘just transition’. “The elephant in the room is consumption”, said Kumi Naidoo. 

The visible crossovers between the business and human rights agenda and trade policy have so far largely taken the form of ‘soft’ references to responsible business conduct in regional and bilateral trade agreements between states. But if the full force of the last decade’s rapid evolution in the norms and practices of business and human rights were fully integrated in trade policy, how might it evolve? This is the challenge that IHRB now seeks to rise to; and it’s an exciting and important one. 

My sense is that there is lots to be done to integrate legal and economic understanding of trade policy within the business and human rights toolkit to bring suggestions into focus (“non product-related production and process methods” and inclusive supply chain management, anyone?).  I imagine I’m not alone in having found myself in new and fascinating territory listening to the session on ‘righting data and technology’ and trying to work out, listening to Jens Munch Lund-Nielsen and Shona Tatchell explaining their business models, whether and how blockchain-enabled initiatives could merit differential treatment in future trade policy frameworks sensitised to the human rights implications of privacy and data security. Analysts and activists Anita Ramasastry and Maryam al-Khawaja, also among the speakers, are clearly people to follow in this area.

IHRB’s session briefings were excellent and deserve to be used as primers long beyond the conference. More than that, Next Generation Trade may prove to be one of those events whose impact you really see when you look back, in a few years’ time, to see how the issues that it raised shaped what you did next. Many of us might well find that it marked the start of all sorts of new directions in our practices. 

Happy Birthday IHRB!

Jostein Hole Kobbeltvedt, Executive Director, Rafto Foundation for Human Rights

How do we tackle the triple challenge of ensuring sustainability, equity and human rights, at once? That is the daunting challenge facing the global community at a time when that community is more fragile than it has been for decades, and when the technology we hoped would help us increasingly seems to be driving us apart. 

These were the considerable challenges the Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB) used its 10 year anniversary in the London docklands to address. In a building that once was an integral part of the transatlantic slave trade, experts and practitioners discussed challenges that are so enormous on their own that they too often are only discussed separately. However, in the real world they will have to be faced simultaneously. True to form IRHB did not shy away from that challenge.  

Mitigating and adapting to climate change will require a transformation of our ways of life so radical it is hard to imagine. Even the most eager proponents of technological innovation cannot refute that it will fundamentally challenge the growth paradigm that has driven globalisation as we know it. 

At the same time as we need to relearn to live within the planet’s limited means, we need to address the growing inequalities between countries and within our societies. If the transition to sustainability is not just, the legitimacy of, and support for, that transition will be in jeopardy. It is indicative that some of the greatest popular uprisings the last years, from France to Chile, have been spurred by price hikes on fossil fuel.  

In the face of these great and immediate challenges, how do we ensure that human rights do not end up being perceived as a luxury we can no longer afford? The collective actions needed to tackle the climate crisis are so great that many policy makers are entertaining the notion they will not be compatible with democracy as we know it. In the Tesla-driving circles of this world the decisiveness of China, and an increasingly authoritarian India, are looked upon with admiration despite the record on climate change being mixed, and the record on human rights being awful. 

Meanwhile, the legitimate anger at an economic model that has benefited a few at the cost of the many is too often directed against minority rights and the institutions established meant to protect them. We see anti-democratic populist movements in Hungary and Poland, a growing backlash against women’s empowerment and against multiculturalism, a drive against LGBTQ in countries from Russia to Uganda, we see Brexit, and we see rise the of leaders such as Trump. In all their different shapes and forms they are examples of how legitimate concerns about the future and legitimate anger at economic injustices are being manipulated into fear of the other and the undermining of core principles of human rights and multilateralism. 

Facing these challenges, our challenge is to make sure human rights are seen and experienced as an essential part of the social contract that must underpin a just transition. For that to happen, human rights must, as Eleanor Roosevelt famously pointed out 70 years ago, be relevant where you live and where you work. 

The role of business and the role of local communities in promoting and respecting human rights will be at the core of building the thrust needed on that journey ahead. Technology must do a better job at facilitating the discussion. 

Daniel D’Ambrosio, International Business and Human Rights Associate, DLA Piper

The Next Generation Trade conference was a perfectly curated showcase of leading thinkers (and thinking!) in the business and human rights space - a perfect way to round out a big 2019 and look forward to what is looking to be an even bigger 2020.

On reflection, a thread that ran through the day (whilst not explicitly raised in all discussions) was the need for new thinking about law and policy and the role this must play in driving secure work in global supply chains, responsible trade, action on the climate crisis, rights-respecting technologies and AI, and ensuring that financial flows are sustainable. Implicit in this is the need to challenge the status quo in thinking about law and policy – which to date has proven inadequate.

For policy makers, efforts to address governance gaps and adequately “regulate” transnational issues can be enriched by drawing on, and supporting the development of, transnational regulatory regimes that are made up of interacting and interconnected legal regimes (public and private), legal systems (domestic and international) and legal forms (hard and soft). Policy makers will increasingly need to draw on a range of actors, in addition to the state, to create, monitor and enforce rules and norms, which are more than just “hard” law or statute and decisions by judges but also will include standards and frameworks set by multi-stakeholder groups of experts and sector or issue-specific specialist bodies, for example.

For businesses, it is about understanding that law and legal risk in relation to business and human rights issues means something different today to what it may have meant five or even ten years ago. The state-based model, that is, thinking about law as only something that emanates from the state, is not enough when trying to bring order to issues that are by their very nature transnational. The spectrum of legal risk continues to stretch.

No doubt 2020 will be another big year for IHRB and the business and human rights community more generally.

Vicky Bowman, Director, Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business

An hour or so into the Next Generation Trade conference, after listening to Mary Robinson and others speaking about ‘Facing the Challenge’, stressing the urgency of phasing out fast fashion and food miles, I started to feel a little confused.  Not personally, but professionally.  Personally, I am a member of the 1st World liberal elite who grew bored of fashion twenty years ago and who still bears the scars when as a careless ‘80s teenager, I bought aubergines out of season to cook a moussaka for my mother, only for her to lecture me on profligacy. I do not doubt that local veg has a season, and for a fortnight or so in the UK, all you should eat is broad beans.

However, I now live in Myanmar where I can eat guilt-free aubergines every day while I listen to the governments of Myanmar and Europe extol the virtues of export-led growth to Europe to create quality jobs for Myanmar people in agriculture, garments and tourism. And as the Director of the Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business, I chip in to explain how lucky we all are that there are Western customers who want chillies grown free of child labour, outerwear stitched for a harassment free living wage, and well-heeled Westerners who will cross half the planet and think nothing of paying for community–involved tourism, to spend a morning in the kitchen of the Kayah Sausage Experience, and pay $50 to boost a local family’s income while protecting, promoting and eating local culture.     

But at NextGen, the narrative is changing. Climate change tops the agenda. Those responsible tourists are actually irresponsible.  They should now eschew long-haul and take a train to the Trossachs. They should get used to 101 ways to cook neeps and tatties, and wear the same pair of jeans for twenty years. I start to wonder what should I tell those people back in Myanmar, the ones whom I have revved up to receive those responsible buyers? Should I tell them to forget it, to load the chillies onto a truck to China, and don’t expect them to ask for your Fairtrade certification.  Should I warn them to prepare for the hordes of zero-dollar tourists who will eschew the Sausage Experience for a trip to Chinese owned jade shop that takes WeChat and avoids paying taxes.  Should I encourage the garment workers to brush up their Thai, and enter debt bondage for a job in a chicken factory? At that’s even before we add in the Rohingya effect, and those reports from the Hague, all of which dents the European appetite for Myanmar.  

The NextGen agenda turns to discussion of a ‘just transition’. But I can’t help wondering what workers and communities in Myanmar are transitioning from. Their lives have been disrupted by five decades of socialism, soldiers and sanctions. Most haven’t even found their feet in the first Industrial Revolution.  Back in Yangon, panellists wax lyrical about the opportunities for ‘leapfrogs’.  I suspect the leapfrog may looking at a dried-up pond, and croaking.

Leila Choukroune, Professor of International Law, University of Portsmouth

70 years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), freedom, equality, democracy and the rule of law are still to be realised in most parts of the world. In Hong Kong, Lebanon, Algeria, Chile or Europe, people are fighting for their rights: the right to express freely their political opinions, the right to have access to justice, the right to be treated equally and with dignity. The Institute for Human Rights and Business is very much part of this global fight and has greatly contributed to breaching the conceptual gap between estranged players, which long refused to even start a conversation. The merit is immense and not to be taken lightly. But despite greater corporate engagement and constructive dialogues, the reality of global business has changed only at the margin.  Human rights violations are still widespread while new issues are arising with globalisation backlashes, contested multilateralism and the unwillingness of world leaders to integrate rights at the core of regulation. The complete eradication of corporate abuses remains a utopia, but it is time to reflect upon the limitations and challenges we are all facing in advancing the human rights agenda. 

One of these self-inflicted barriers is that of a metalanguage of poor effectiveness and complete conceptual vacuity. Without even realising it, the human rights community has embraced a consensual corporate language deprived of legal force. In using inappropriate and vague terms one creates unnecessary confusion on the objectives to be met. It is a deceptive bureaucratic jargon. It is for human being what greenwashing is for the environment. It is George Orwell’s “Newspeak” supporting the most oppressive regimes, those which rely on the pauperisation of language and the ability to critically address and contest a situation. It “diminishes the range of thought." On the contrary, the language of rights is supported by the force of law. It is a powerful tool for human rights realisation. It is progressive and transformative. Taking words seriously equals to taking rights seriously. Forget about consensual and empty terms! Let us reinvest the Universal Declaration terminology for a new concrete action plan and real changes to happen on the ground. 

Nazma Akter, General Secretary and Executive Director, Awaj Foundation

In the modern era, in order to develop the work place, we need to give more focus to developing women's capacities and skills. In Bangladesh's garment and textile sector mostly 60% of workers are youth, mostly women. 

However, in last two years, the numbers of workers in the sector have been significantly reducing. One of the reasons for this is the increase in automation in the workplace. To improve the future of work for women, we can all make a few changes, such as increasing female empowerments by providing awareness programmes and developing young women's critical thinking skills to encourage their innovative ideas and creative solutions. Energetic and powerful youth will be better able to handle any situation if we can give awareness and provide the skill building training programmes.  

With the rise of automation and artificial intelligence in global production chains, skills building is paramount. Socio-culture factors will need to be overcome, including perceptions that women cannot operate automated machine systems and other technologies. 

Systemic challenges to women remain, including health hazards, malnutrition, and maternal rights. Similarly to provide women-friendly workplaces, we need to rectify zero tolerance policies on gender-based harassment and violence. 

For improving the situation in future, we need to be transparent at all stages of the supply chain. Respecting freedom of speech is critical, so that any worker can speak out and share their issues and concerns. Worker education and capacity building is a key tool in this regard, to increase their understanding of local and international labour law, human rights, and workplace standards. Clearly, if we can empower and improve young women’s situations, the workplace conditions and their living situations would improve.  

Rémy Friedmann, Senior Advisor on business and human rights, Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs

The Next Generation Trade conference highlighted that being on the edge of (Greta-age-) panic is a possible catalyser of collective action on business and human rights in the transition era that we are living.

In the context of the threats that the inevitable transformation of the global economy due to climate change and the evolution of technology pose to the availability of decent jobs, a holistic approach is required. Mary Robinson’s optimism that, if faced with no other choice, humanity will find the solution towards a just transition, is a motivation to identify the right answers. There is no choice but to act now.

This cannot happen through a succession of conferences but by listening to and acting on the basis of the words of Nazma Akter saying that Bangladeshi workers are not interested in the future of work because they already know what to expect. This means that we need to be ready to be challenged by the people who are currently affected by less than decent work conditions and the negative impacts of global trade. People who do not see the concrete results of almost ten years of UNGP implementation and five years of treaty discussions need to be even more included in the discussions and be part of the solution. Their prospects can only be better if public and private actors join forces to identify what works and what doesn’t work in the current model. The shared space of trust between the different stakeholders must be broadened and, while the core commitment to human rights has to remain, regulation and voluntary measures will have to be ready to adapt to new realities of the global market and the evolution of technology.

I am grateful to IHRB for identifying the emerging issues around global trade and bringing a wide range of important actors together in order to address all the focus areas of these new realities.

Alex Popper, Masters student, University of Essex

The choice of venue for IHRB’s Next Generation Trade event was no coincidence: it took place in the oldest-surviving dock houses in London, where, during the transatlantic slave trade, West Indian sugar was stored. Seated there, surrounded by so much history, it was impossible not to be reminded of the grim underbelly of global trade. Although nearly 200 years have passed since the practice of slavery was abolished in the British Empire, the reality of modern international trade is that the incorrigible pursuit of profit still undermines the realisation of human rights across the globe.

In the shadow of such history came the highly anticipated panel on ‘Confronting the Climate Crisis’. The climate crisis is the greatest threat to human rights of our time, and the panellists wasted no time in stressing this point: “we are living in a world of more fire, more floods, and more famine” said Steve Waygood of Aviva; “we have just ten years to stabilise the planet” claimed ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow; and all three of the panellists agreed that the global trade and investment community has contributed much to the climate crisis. That community, it was agreed, must step up to the plate and fundamentally reform the way it operates in order to combat this crisis. However, as Mary Robinson pointed out at the beginning of the day, with the Trump administration blocking appointments to the WTO Appellate Body, the multilateral global trading system, probably the only medium through which the required level of co-operation can take place, is being undermined.

There were a number of suggestions from the panellists - from the incremental (“investment communities should divest from fossil fuel companies”) to the radical (“system change is necessary to reach a zero-poverty, zero-carbon world”) - but the elephant in the room was the slow erosion of the multilateral system. Only with effective civil society pressure to reform trade policy on both a domestic and an intergovernmental level can the world combat the climate crisis: as of 2019, however, the odds that the required reforms are passed to save our planet are looking slim indeed.