Respecting the rights of migrant workers

"All companies need to reduce the distance between themselves, their operations and negative impacts on the rights of migrant workers, consistent with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Business cannot contract out the...

Time for a Grown-up Approach to Tax Justice

Tax dodging has become a big issue in the public debate about business responsibility, recently topping the list of concerns in the UK, ahead of discrimination, supply chain labour standards and human rights. A group of British MPs are calling for...

Apartheid, Mandela, and Business

Apartheid, or the policy of racial segregation that the ruling National Party practiced in South Africa from 1948 to 1991, was not only racist, but also economic. It privileged one group over others, controlling levers of political and economic...

A Letter from the UK: Our Surveillance Debate

This commentary was originally published by the Center for Global Communication Studies

I was recently invited to the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania to present IHRB’s Digital Dangers project on the ICT sector...

“Bittersweet Harvest” in Cambodia – A cautionary tale for Myanmar

In June of this year the European Union (EU) reinstated Myanmar’s access to the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), which provides for duty and quota-free exports to EU countries under the “Everything But Arms” programme, raising hopes for...

Beyond the Guiding Principles? Examining new calls for a legally binding instrument on business and human rights

In the two years since the UN Human Rights Council unanimously adopted the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (the UNGPs), which operationalized the 2008 “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework (the UN Framework), questions about the...

How the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises Relate to Investors

This op-Ed was originally published on ResponsibleInvestor.com.

"The underlying tenet of the UN Guiding Principles and the OECD Guidelines is that all businesses, including and especially state-owned enterprises, have a responsibility to respect...

Responsible Business in Myanmar: Getting down to the grassroots?

Protests against large industry projects are becoming common in Myanmar. This month villagers are protesting against a Thai company’s inadequate compensation measures for the land it acquired during the 2010 construction of a road to Dawei in...

A tribute to Chris Avery

As the opening session of the first annual UN Forum on Business and Human Rights in Geneva last December ended, I paused near the entrance of the main hall, waiting for colleagues. Standing beside me was my friend Chris Avery, the founding director...

Making Public-Private Partnerships Work

This op-ed was originally published on Thomson Reuters Foundation News channel trust.org.

A full agenda awaits business executives, government officials and civil society representatives attending next week’s U.N. Global Compact leaders summit in...

Kenya’s Emerging Natural Resources Sector: Getting it Right

Kenya is the latest country to discover oil and gas reserves with potential for commercial production. Interestingly, Kenya has been exploring for oil since the 1950’s but strong interest only took hold around 2000 after the completion of a national...

UK Government prepares to launch National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights

On 4 September, the UK Government will launch its much-anticipated National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights. It is an important landmark - greater UK policy coherence is important for furthering the protection of human rights.

The decision...