Evolving Expectations: The role of Export Credit Agencies in promoting and exemplifying responsible business practices

Export Credit Agencies are a significant source of global financing and insurance, specifically with regard to financing of large scale projects and business opportunities in developing countries.  

For example the Economist Intelligence Unit...

Fulfilling the Forgotten Pillar: Ensuring Access to Remedy for Business and Human Rights Abuses

Access to remedy featured strongly on the agenda of the Fourth Annual United Nations (UN) Forum on Business and Human Rights. This is a good sign, but also a recognition that one of the greatest challenges within the business and human rights agenda...

On International Human Rights Defenders’ Day

International human rights defenders’ day, which we observe today, is a moment of sobering reflection. Peaceful, non-violent human rights defenders are being prosecuted, convicted, and jailed in some cases, and intimidated, tortured, and sometimes...

Can Corporations Support Peace?

Corporations have been known to exacerbate or cause conflict in areas where social tensions are prevalent. Research has focused on assisting companies to reduce their negative impacts on conflict, and to contribute proactively to promoting peace.

What does the UK’s Draft Investigatory Powers Bill mean for ICT companies’ responsibility to respect privacy?

The UK government recently published the long-anticipated draft Investigatory Powers Bill, outlining proposed surveillance reforms. 

All sides of the debate broadly agree that UK legislation in this area needs an overhaul, as it does not adequately...

Five Things that can Promote Transparency in Public-Private Partnerships

This article was originally published on Heinrich Böll Foundation North America.

Transparency is an important but easily overlooked agenda in the mix of challenges facing Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) that aim to tackle a range of development...

Human Rights or the Way of the Dodo?

Make your choice now for a better world by 2030.

In September this year, world leaders rallied in New York to sign off on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This is a good plan – but it requires a step-change. And the greatest leap must...

Why Ken Saro-Wiwa Matters

Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was executed along with eight Ogoni leaders in Nigeria on this day 20 years ago, was a poet and writer. Twenty years after his death, his voice continues to resonate because the lessons of his life are powerful and his call for...

What Ken Saro-Wiwa Taught the World

In his final statement before his execution for fabricated charges of abetting murder, Ken Saro-Wiwa declared that:

"I repeat that we all stand before history. I and my colleagues are not the only ones on trial. Shell is here on trial and it is as...

What Ken Saro-Wiwa Taught Me

Today, 20 years ago, I stood in front of a friend’s hotel door, afraid to knock. I was there to tell him his father had been hanged by the military dictatorship in Nigeria because his father had the temerity to fight for the human rights of his...

New Opportunities to Integrate Human Rights Considerations into EU Public Procurement

In 2014, three new European Union (EU) Directives governing the way EU Member States purchase goods, works and services came into force.

Public procurement makes up a substantial share of world trade flows, amounting to €1000 billion per year.  In...

Can Mega-sporting events get back on track?

Mega-Sports Events (MSEs) and the sporting federations that organise them are once again under intense scrutiny. Switzerland’s OECD National Contact Point has just approved for further investigation a complaint lodged by the Building and Wood...

Practical and Principled Prioritization of Supply Chain Human Rights Risks

Over the past few years, respect for human rights has taken center stage on the corporate responsibility agenda. It is a development which has been animated and accelerated by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (Guiding...

How to make the SDGs a reality? Create more pre-competitive space

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to be endorsed by world leaders in New York this week, represent a unique opportunity for greater global prosperity – but only if businesses and governments know when to stop competing and...

Focus on Qatar: Why Human Rights Research Matters

Earlier this week in Qatar, authorities finally released researchers Krishna Upadhyaya and Ghimire Gundev, who were detained for eight days while in the country for the Norway-based Global Network for Rights and Development. Their story is but the...

In Iran, Anti-Baha’i Actions Hurt People and Business

The airwaves are still buzzing with news of the historic nuclear deal between six major world powers and Iran. As foreign corporations begin to consider the opportunities to do business in Iran, it is important to address pressing moral and economic...

Can the Construction Industry Build Itself a Slavery-Free Future?

In recent years the issues of forced labour and human trafficking have risen higher on the political agenda than ever before. As awareness has grown, the world has come to learn such exploitation is far more common than was previously known and...

A Proposal for an International Arbitration Tribunal on Business and Human Rights

We have attended many forums, conferences and seminars where participants are desperately asking why, after years of endless high-level rhetoric, there is no access to justice for victims of corporate abuse of human rights – a disgrace to society.

Business and the SDGs: How Can We Deepen Scale and Impact?

This article was originally published on BusinessFightsPoverty.org

The role of the private sector in realizing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is widely recognized. What remains unclear is how exactly business should contribute most...

Towards Mandatory Corporate Human Rights Due Diligence at the EU Level?

How a French Bill could make European business and human rights hard law

The French parliament is currently discussing a Bill that could considerably affect the global business and human rights regulatory landscape. The French Bill aims to make...