As we look to World Human Rights Day on the 10th of December, the ARA sat down with Chris Caskey, Manager, Human Rights at the UN Global Compact Network Australia to understand the global human rights landscape after the recent the United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights in Geneva.
Q1. Chris, you’ve just attended the United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights in Geneva. Can you talk to the atmosphere at the forum – what are the current challenges to implementation of the Guiding Principles in a business landscape?
Electric – is how I’d describe the atmosphere! Over the three days, nearly 2000 business and human rights practitioners descended on Building E at the Palais des Nations at UN Geneva. Awesome experience meeting many of the leaders from around the world bringing the UNGPs to life and to see how far the practice has come.
Oh look – I think there are many headwinds facing businesses as they look to implement the UNGPs. Listening to many multi-national enterprises at the Forum, it’s clear that fragmentation of regulation at the international level is one of the key barriers. One speaker made the remark on the first day: “we always ask for the smart mix – but with a multitude of non-binding standards and different but similar binding standards, it’s not so smart.”
Of course, many of the current challenges within the private sector – inflation, new and emerging tech, focus on margins, geopolitics etc – all impact the business and human rights practice. What I would say, is that despite these we are starting to see some promising partnerships and areas of innovation in connecting with and empowering rights-holders.
Q2. We are approaching World Human Rights Day on the 10th December, which falls on the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. What does the future of this Declaration look like, and given the current climate, what can we be improving?
I think Human Rights Day is an excellent opportunity for reflection and stocktaking. For me, the UDHR is a baseline for humanity – for how we will treat each other and how we can expect to be treated. It’s clear that we’ve made significant progress in realising that dream over the past 75 years, and if we’re honest, we know there are many areas where we’ve come up short.
If I had to pick one area for improvement, I think it’s our ability to confidently live up to the promise of universality. As practitioners, we really need to lean into our international standards and the plethora of international experts and human rights defenders who can help us apply them.
Ultimately, I think being able to embody that rights-holder centric frame and elevate the voices of those who are impacted is a non-negotiable for the business and human rights practitioner, even when it’s unpopular. Human rights defenders often are.
Q3. In your mind, what is the role of business in acknowledging days of significance such as World Human Rights Day?
Within the business, I think Human Rights Day presents an excellent opportunity for practitioners to pause and reflect on just how far their own practice areas have come. At the UN Global Compact Network Australia, we’re privileged to work with many leading companies that have committed to universal standards and practitioners who work tirelessly to bring the standards to life. These people are awesome and they have to be because the work is not easy. It can be emotional, heavy and at times can feel like a contradiction asking a for-profit organisation to also look after people.
Q4. The Modern Slavery Act Review exposed several flaws in the Modern Slavery Act.
What do you see as the future of the Act and do you see a role for the mandatory human rights due diligence in Australia?
Indeed – many of the submissions for the Statutory Review criticised the Act for focussing too heavily on reporting and not enough on remediation and outcomes. I’d agree with this, but at the same time it’s promising to see recent benchmarks start to tally the companies that are finding instances of modern slavery and disclosing remediation steps.
For now, you may have seen that the Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus KC MP very recently introduced legislation to establish a federal Anti-slavery Commissioner tasked with engaging and supporting victims and survivors and supporting businesses to address risks in their operations and supply chains. As far as I know, we’ll have to wait until 2024 to see the full Government response to the Review.
But more broadly – it’s clear that with the wheels in motion in the EU and various hard law requirements popping up around the world, human rights due diligence will ultimately become a global norm. Even within Australia, many companies that are selling into these markets already have to conduct human rights due diligence as their customers can’t approve the purchase without it. My sense is we’ll see these cascading expectations start to snowball in coming years and I’d hope that any changes to the Act in Australia enable companies to align with those international standards.
Q5. What do you see as the greatest disruptors to the business human rights landscape in the coming years – or – If businesses can only focus on one thing when talking about human rights due diligence, what should they be focussing on?
As mentioned earlier, I think the disruptors will be the same as those across the private sector – cost minimisation, geopolitical tensions and a changing climate. From a practice perspective, I think we’ll see even more convergence between human rights due diligence and environmental assessments as companies look for integrated solutions, companies will be engaging new partners and trying out new things to get a closer view of what’s happening on the ground, and we’ll get a clearer picture of what leading communication of performance on human rights looks like (hint, balance and storytelling!).
But for my one thing – especially in the Australia specific context – I’d say if you’re an Australian company and you haven’t yet assessed which human rights issues are most salient to your value chain, you’re flying a bit blind in the face of growing risk. You’re also probably not alone – we teamed up with Pillar Two in August this year to benchmark the ASX50 and found that only 24% of companies have disclosed that they undertake any sort of assessment process, so there’s a lot of work yet to be done.
If you’d like to join Australia’s leading community of companies that are building human rights due diligence processes in Australia, join us at the UN Global Compact Network Australia. To find out more about our human rights practice and focus areas, click here.
