Recognized international human rights have traditionally been framed as creating duties and obligations for states under treaties and other instruments and elements of international human rights law. The main concern of human rights activists has generally been “vertical protection”, which refers to ensuring that individuals...
The Covid-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on global supply chains. In a note prepared by the OECD Centre for Responsible Business Conduct it was reported that a significant percentage of supplier factories had seen their activities drop by 50% or more and there...
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights described the Covid-19 outbreak as “a serious threat to the right to life and to health of people everywhere” and argued that the international human rights framework could provide “crucial guideposts that can strengthen the effectiveness” of the...
When making decisions about the actions to be taken to address the unique challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, companies and their leaders have relied on a variety of tools and guidelines specific to their situations such as applicable laws and regulations, their own internal codes...
When governments responded to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020 with “stay-at-home” orders that shut down businesses and left millions of households desperate for ways to continue to buy products needed to get through the crisis, the demand for Amazon services exploded. ...
Once the human rights strategy has been completed it is time to move forward with developing and implementing human rights commitments. Developing those commitments involves doing a scan of existing commitments relating to human rights issues; holding discussions with major stakeholders; creating a working group...
Your company depends on a business model that is based on offering the lowest price in the marketplace to consumers for products that are sourced from suppliers working on narrow profit margins. Or perhaps your company relies on short lead times for delivery of products...
Companies need to be sensitive to actual or potential complicity with human rights abuses committed by governments against specific groups that might be subject to systematic discrimination and other limitations on their freedoms and ability to exercise their basic human rights. For example, if your...
Your company is about to enter into an arrangement with an outside financing source, such as a commercial bank, a governmental financing agency or investors (private or public), to secure new capital that can be used to continue existing operations, acquire and integrate new technologies,...
Your company is considering entering into a joint venture with a new foreign partner to pursue a specific business objective in the partner’s home country. Joint ventures with local partners in new geographic markets have always been an attractive and efficient way to gain access...