UN Human Rights and Business Dilemma Forum

In December of 2008, GE joined the UN Global Compact. In this same year, the GE Foundation awarded a grant to the Foundation for the Global Compact to develop a resource to help responsible businesses successfully navigate some of the human rights “dilemmas” they might face, especially when doing business in countries where the risk of being implicated in human rights abuse is relatively high. The project, which has been operational since July 2009, is implemented by Maplecroft, together with the UN Global Compact. In 2010, the GE Foundation awarded the UN Global Compact a further grant to extend the term of the project and to build upon its success.

The Human Rights and Business Dilemmas Forum provides a substantial online resource specifically tailored for multinational companies (MNCs) doing business—or planning to do business—in a range of emerging markets. This is with the aim of helping them to ensure that they fulfill the corporate responsibility to respect human rights while benefitting from the substantial commercial opportunities offered in many of these countries. In particular, the Forum helps MNCs and other interested stakeholders to identify, explore and share some of the human rights “dilemmas” they might face, for which there are currently no straightforward or easy answers.

The Forum provides in-depth analysis of a wide range of dilemmas relevant to business and offers an interactive opportunity for users to share, explore and discuss human rights themes, case studies and good practices with business professionals, human rights experts and other relevant stakeholders. It is constituted of several different elements. These include:

• Dilemma documents: These currently cover 22 different human rights themes, ranging from Child Labor through to Security Forces and Human Rights.  The dilemma documents integrate “real-world” examples of challenging situations companies have found themselves in, how they dealt with them and what the outcomes were.¹
• Case studies: These build on the Company examples by offering focused case studies examining examples of good company practice that could potentially be replicated by other MNCs in order to manage the risk of negatively impacting human rights. Some examples of the companies whose good practices are featured in the case studies include HP, Chiquita, Adidas-Salomon, Timberland, Standard Chartered, Cisco Systems, De Beers, Gap, Manpower and Talisman Energy—among many others.
• Online discussion forum: This provides a moderated online public forum for the discussion of the “dilemmas” and company case studies. It targets a wide range of stakeholders, including corporate sustainability professionals, academics and NGOs. It is aimed at facilitating the sharing of knowledge and insight, and at helping companies refine their approaches to human rights challenges.
• Resources: These provide a wide range of general and specific references and links to further information to allow users to “drill down” where they are in need of primary sources and more detailed guidance/information.

The Business and Human Rights Dilemmas Forum has been developed in alignment with the Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact (UNGC) and the UN Protect, Respect and Remedy framework, which was adopted by the UN Human Rights Council on the recommendation of the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises. The overarching aim of the Forum is to enhance the collective understanding of how these instruments can be understood and implemented in practical terms by business.

The UN Global Compact and Maplecroft have, through the development of the Forum, generated readable, business-friendly documents that take a “real-world“ approach, while at the same time ensuring the production of comprehensive and technically rigorous documents aligned with relevant UN frameworks.  For businesses, the Forum provides an important source of information, analysis and insight to help them assess risks as part of their human rights due diligence as well as a platform for engaging in related dialogue.

The Forum has further helped to build awareness among UNGC stakeholders about corporate best practices with respect to human rights and enhances the collective understanding of human rights dilemmas and solutions for responsible business. It has, additionally, informed discussions in various multi-stakeholder groups, such as the UNGC Human Rights Working Group.

Georg Kell, executive director of the UN Global Compact, has commented as follows about the Forum: 
“The Human Rights and Business Dilemmas Forum provides constructive solutions and stimulates dialogue about the options available for responsible business in environments where human rights may be at risk. It thus facilitates implementation of the UN Global Compact Ten Principles with a focus on concrete and practical action by business.”