The document discusses human rights and business. It summarizes John Ruggie's UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which establish that governments have a duty to protect human rights while businesses have a responsibility to respect them. The interviewees discuss how companies can identify and manage their human rights impacts through processes like human rights due diligence and impact assessments. They provide examples of companies realizing business benefits from respecting human rights and the risks of failing to address human rights issues.

1. www.criticaleye.net 01
Human Rights
Putting the Social into Sustainability

2. www.criticaleye.net 02
In this Q&A article, Luke Wilde, CEO of
business consultancy TwentyFifty, and
Gareth Llewellyn, Executive Director of Safety
and Sustainable Development at Network
Rail, explain why there is now international
consensus that business should respect
human rights and what businesses can do to
identify and manage their social impacts.
How does the topic of human rights
concern itself with business?
Luke Wilde: For many people, when you
mention the topic of human rights they think
of personnel and employment rights, sweat
shops in Asia or, perhaps, the allegations
that were made against Shell regarding their
operations in Ogoniland in Nigeria. But just
take a cursory look at some of the recent
stories on the website of the Business and
Human Rights Resource Centre [business-
humanrights.org] and you’ll see discussions
about companies that are selling mobile,
text and email surveillance technology
to the regimes of countries such as Iran
and Syria. You’ll find continuing concerns
about trafficking and forced employment of
children on cocoa farms, particularly in Cote
d’Ivoire. And you’ll find coverage of Global
Witness, the NGO deciding to leave the
Kimberley Process [which checks the origin of
diamonds to ensure they’re ‘conflict free’].
In the UK, if you take a look at the
Gangmasters Licensing Authority,
you’ll see that it’s referred 38 cases of
the abuse of workers, usually migrant
workers, to the Serious and Organised
Crime Squad in the last year.
Given this burgeoning scope of understanding
of the human rights impacts of businesses
and the increasing challenge of civil
society, the former UN Secretary General,
Kofi Annan, decided to appoint a UN
Special Representative for Business and
Human Rights, John Ruggie, in 2005.
How has John Ruggie helped to shape the
‘human rights and business’ debate?
LW: John’s work over the last six years has
been characterised by extensive international
consultation with businesses and governments
and NGOs. In June 2011 he produced the
UN Guiding Principles on Business and
Human Rights. This is the template by which
businesses and governments can start to look
at how they need to address business and
human rights. One of the things that Ruggie
has very helpfully done is to clearly separate
the roles of government and business; the
state has a duty to protect human rights
while business has a responsibility to respect
human rights. Leaving aside the legal debate
about the applicability of international
standards to businesses, he has said simply
that the baseline expectation of society is
that businesses respect human rights.
Gareth Llewellyn: There are three points of
attack on human rights. One is to protect
human rights, one is to respect them and
one is to further them. It’s actually the job
of government, the state, to protect human
rights. The job of business is to respect
human rights in the way in which it operates,
but, actually, you can, if you are really clever
as a business, move into the next space,
which is to promote or further where there’s
consequential business benefit in doing so.
For most businesses, concern arises from the
sense that we’re being asked to move into
protector space, and that’s not for us. Once
people overcome that and realise that actually
that’s not where business best fits, then it is
a lot easier to open up a debate internally.
Do you have any examples of companies
realising ‘consequential business benefits’?
GL: When Statoil went into Venezuela, one
of the things they did early on was to train
the judiciary in international human rights
legislation. It not only increased the capacity
of the country to tackle human rights issues,
but it also meant that, if ever there was a
challenge as to why Statoil was operating in
Venezuela, they knew that they would get a fair
hearing in the courts. It was a business benefit,
but it was also an opportunity to extend
the capacity of the judiciary to understand
human rights in the broader sense.
LW: That is an interesting example whereby
a company has taken proactive steps beyond
its own impacts as a business in order to
improve the operating environment, which
benefits both it and society. We work a lot
in the agricultural sector and in developing
countries labour shortages are arising as a
result of industrialisation and urbanisation.
Poor labour practices in agriculture do not
help, and supporting programmes to ensure
human rights are respected and promoted in
rural communities can help to retain workers
and encourage new groups into the workforce,
The job of the state is
to protect human rights.
The job of business
is to respect them

3. www.criticaleye.net 03
such as women. In an industrial sector, we
found a direct relationship between a dramatic
fall off in quality of a safety critical component
and labour unrest in a suppliers’ factory.
Ruggie’s work has led to guidelines
that help companies monitor, control
and audit their human rights activities.
How are these ‘guiding principles’
actually helping organisations?
LW: Ruggie suggests that what companies
lack at the moment is a comprehensive
process of due diligence for understanding
their human rights impacts and the
ability to manage those impacts.
Many mining companies have been talking
about human rights for years. In the past these
companies often had policies and guidance
for their staff in place, but now they’re really
beginning to knuckle down and look much
harder at where they are doing business. These
are the countries where the human rights risk
and conditions on the ground are the worst,
so that they can prioritise their attention
there and consider conducting a human
rights impact assessment in such countries.
Businesses are used to having a due
diligence process in place. And, in many
respects, what he’s asking for in these
principles is quite similar to the sorts of
processes that companies might be thinking
about putting into place to ensure their
international operations meet some of
the requirements of the UK Bribery Act,
pertaining to ‘adequate procedures’. When
we talk about human rights impacts, we’re
often saying these impacts are beyond
simply the core operations of the company;
they may be through the relationships
that companies have with suppliers, joint
venture partners and with governments.
So, mining companies, for example, would
want to question who provides the security
for their installations and whether and how
they ensure that those security providers
are trained in order to respect human
rights, or what are they doing to ensure
that their JV partner company meets and
respects human rights commitments.
GL: For me, one of the biggest changes for the
companies I’ve worked for comes when you
strip away the term ‘human rights’ and you
look at what’s underneath it. Some companies
would classify this as sustainability, some
as corporate responsibility and some as just
general operating practices around things
like health, safety, freedom of association,
collective bargaining, security; all those
components are sitting under the human
rights banner. Many companies will be doing
a big proportion of this, although not all of
it, without ever tacking it as ‘human rights’.
For most businesses, core operations will be
relatively well under control; it’ll be more in
the supply chain that they’ll be looking to
see whether there are impacts. The other bit
that I’ve seen, more in the gold industry than
anywhere else, is that once your product goes
on to the next stage, quite often it can then be
contaminated with other products which do
have a conflict-related background. When we
were sending gold to refineries, for example,
some of them would be taking gold from the
Congo which they knew at that time had been
used to fund conflict. And, so, the bar that
comes out, which is generally stamped with
the miner’s name, was not pure at all. These
issues become very complicated, particularly
when you’re in the base metal industry or
in industries with very long supply chains.
How do ‘human rights impact
assessments’ differ from an environmental
or social impact assessment?
LW: One difference is that you have got an
objective social framework in the international
human rights standards which you’re looking
at a business activity in relation to and,
indeed, the activities of governments.
The second point is that, when you do a
human rights impact assessment, you’re not
only looking at the business activities, but
you’re looking at the context in which the
business operates and the human rights issues
and the protections or lack of protections that
are present in that context. You’re also not
only looking at the impact of the business,
you’re also looking down the supply chain
and thinking about its relationships to
joint venture partners and governments.
Finally, Ruggie emphasises the importance
of what he terms ‘meaningful engagement’
with potentially affected groups. So, in
this respect, he’s thinking about local
Human rights impacts… may
be through the relationships
that companies have with
suppliers, joint venture partners
and with governments

4. www.criticaleye.net 04
communities or indigenous groups
operating or living in the area where
perhaps a mine will impact. Or even perhaps
employees within your own workforce or
contractor’s employees and engaging
with them in, in his terms, a meaningful
way - which I think is beyond some of the
consultation processes we are familiar with.
What’s the risk of human rights being
cast aside as an unwelcome diversion,
as has sometimes happened with
environmental issues in constrained
economic times, rather than something
that actually helps the business?
LW: Many businesses know the economic
challenges are vast, but it’s not hard to see
that social expectations are changing and
moving apace. I would point to the Occupy
protestors and widely held disquiet about
the operations of the City as evidence of that.
It gives legitimacy to politicians to make
changes. Looking at India, for example,
there’s been a long running antipathy
to multinational companies, but what’s
been going on very recently in terms of
preventing multi-national supermarkets
from opening there, takes it to another
level. We are seeing social expectations
shift and I think we can anticipate further
policy from governments in this area.
For businesses, the cost of remediation or
catching up to regulations is often greater
than the cost of being ahead. If you want to
be a leading company, then now is the time
to be exploring what the future of business
looks like. And, in human rights, you have
a set of social expectations and objective
frameworks on which you can have that
dialogue with your stakeholders. Without
them there’s very little guidance for how
you might resolve issues or find a middle
ground. Human rights frameworks can help
to make clear the difference between the
role of the state and the role of business.
You are both referring to mining
companies here. What about
other sectors? What about service
industries like executive search?
GL: When I was at the World Gold Council
we did a lot of work with Intel. And you
wouldn’t naturally look at Intel as being
an organisation that would have particular
concerns in this area. But one of the things
they are most worried about is where the
raw materials come from for their products.
And they look right down their supply
chain to understand the consequences of
operating in some very difficult parts of the
world. Companies like Gap and HP know
that their greatest exposure is some distance
down the supply chain, where the NGOs
are quite adept at finding those problems
before the business finds them themselves.
In terms of a headhunting firm, when they’re
faced with the potential to work for a company
which, in the eyes of the public or others, has
a fairly poor human rights record, they’ve got
two choices. They can walk away and say, no,
we’re not going to do it, and allow another
head hunter who probably hasn’t thought
through the human rights issues to take up
that mandate. Or they could look at it as a
fantastic opportunity to change the culture
of that organisation by putting in a person
who’s got human rights vision… By bringing
the right people into the right place with the
right skills, they can make a massive change.
What sanctions are likely to be put in
place for those private companies that
might take human rights less seriously?
LW: We are seeing companies increasingly
brought to courts in Europe and the US. An
example would be Trafigura, the privately-held
trading company which was responsible for
the discharge of chemicals in Cote d’Ivoire a
few years ago. A Dutch court recently upheld
a case against it for illegal export of toxic
waste. However, before you get to the legal
sanctions, I think privately wealthy individuals
and families who own non-listed companies
are very conscious of their place in society
and don’t really want to be associated at a
personal level with injuries and the like. I’d
also argue there’s a recruitment issue, at
least in the West, where corporate reputation
is certainly a big factor in people’s decisions
about who they work for these days.
With stakeholders ever more socially
networked and demanding of their
organisations, is being a ‘non-
involved bystander’ in an environment
where human rights abuses are
committed no longer acceptable?
LW: One of the big shifts that Ruggie is really
saying is that we’ve got to move into a world
Companies [should] know
what their human rights
impacts are and show how
they’re addressing them

5. www.criticaleye.net 05
The most obvious and most memorable
disaster in that respect was Morecambe
Bay, where nearly 40 Chinese working
as cockle pickers drowned.
In the last 18 months, the Equality and
Human Rights Commission has undertaken
a very comprehensive enquiry into
the meat packing sector, which found
extensive abuses of not just migrant
workers, but also, for example, pregnant
women working in meat packing factories
who were not allowed toiletry breaks.
So, UK companies should never believe
that their UK activities are free from
human rights abuses and should look
as diligently at them as they would look
at their international operations.
GL: You have to look at people down
the supply chain – and the dilemma
here is the extent to which the top level
company is an easy target for things that
are happening probably four or five steps
down the supply chain, even though
those suppliers are still UK-based.
Actually, It’s a bit of a circular argument
which gets worse the more regulation
gets involved. And I think we need to find
a way, particularly in the UK, of making
sure that the big companies feel obligated
to be more paternalistic down the supply
chain and do more work, but knowing
that, if they do find issues, they’re not
going to get penalised right away.
What really troubles me is the extent to
which some companies in this country
outsource their risk protection to labelling
schemes, like Fair Trade and Rainforest
Alliance. Now, the reason I mention it is
that I took my children on holiday to Malawi
a few years ago and we stayed for a couple
of days on a tea estate near Mount Mulanje.
We saw children under 16 working in the
tea estates, there. These workers claimed
they were only being paid a dollar a day
and, because the tea estate owned their
houses, if they complained they lost
their job AND their house. Yet, that was
Rainforest Certified and it was providing
tea to Tetley, which is part of Unilever.
Now, I subsequently had a chat about
this with somebody at Unilever and it
became pretty clear to me that they
looked at something like the Rainforest
Alliance as their sole protection against
human rights risk. I think companies
are pretty vulnerable if they do that.
© Criticaleye 2012
where companies know and show; know
what their human rights impacts are and
show how they’re addressing them. For
example, I was with an executive who leads
a business in Egypt and he was explaining
exactly what they’ve been doing for the
last 18 months. He knows what their
human rights impacts are and he’s been
able to show to anyone who asks what
they’re doing to make sure that they have
a neutral, if not a positive, impact on the
human rights situation in that country. I
think the best country managers in the
best businesses often have very positive
impacts on particular situations, but
we just haven’t necessarily been able to
articulate that as businesses in the past.
And I think that’s what we really should
be thinking about at the moment.
GL: I’m taken back to the time when
CalPERS, the huge California pension
fund manager, started selling shares in
ABB because ABB was building a power
line in the Darfur region of Sudan. And the
easiest thing for ABB would have been to
walk away, but actually it took the view
that, even though it was being accused of
being complicit in human rights abuses
simply by being there, the long-term
benefit of having power in that country
was much greater. And the chairman wrote
to all the staff in ABB saying the company
was prepared to take a hit from CalPERS
and actually, just to carry on with the
work. And I think that understanding of
the longer-term benefits of things and
the boundary between direct human
rights abuses and, in that particular
case, what was perceived as being
complicit, I think is hugely important.
For those companies whose main
operations are in the UK, with its
strong protections of human rights in
law, what issues around this subject
should they be concerned with?
LW: Probably the most significant thing
I encourage companies with large UK
footprints to worry about is the treatment
of migrant workers. We have certainly
found examples where migrant workers
have been abused; where they haven’t been
paid minimum wage, where they’ve been
threatened with violence by employers
or where there’s simply been an absence
of attention paid to their well-being.
We know that, certainly within the
agricultural sector in the UK, there’s
extensive use of migrant workers from
the Eastern European countries but
also, on occasion, Chinese workers.
Luke has played a lead role in the international
dialogue on business and human rights for
over a decade. He has provided training and
mentoring on this topic to over fifty leading
companies in the UK, Germany and beyond.
In the UK, TwentyFifty are working with the
Ministry of Justice, the Equality and Human
Rights Commission, the CBI, Business in the
Community and other interested parties to
establish a multi-stakeholder dialogue in
the UK on business and human rights.
In 2005, Gareth became the first person
from industry to be invited to address the
United Nations General Assembly on the role
of business in upholding human rights. He
was also a founder member of the Business
Leaders Initiative on Human Rights. Gareth
joined Network Rail having previously
worked in an interim role with the World Gold
Council and, before this, having led Anglo
American’s strategy on matters of sustainable
development, including human rights.
Contact the authors through www.criticaleye.net
Luke Wilde
CEO
TwentyFifty Ltd
Gareth Llewellyn
Executive Director of Safety
and Sustainable Development
Network Rail