Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights
The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights are a set of guidelines for States and companies to prevent, address and remedy human rights abuses committed in business operations. child labour
Many global businesses are run with consideration for the well-being of the people whose lives they touch. But others—whether through incompetence or by design— seriously harm the communities around them, their workers, and even the governments under which they work. Much of the problem lies with companies themselves—even those that think of themselves as ethical. Too many still deal with human rights problems on the fly, without forethought and often in a de facto regulatory vacuum that they lobby vigorously to maintain. In many parts of the world, company human rights practices are shaped by self-created policies, voluntary initiatives, and unenforceable “commitments”—not by binding laws and regulations. History’s long and growing catalogue of corporate human rights disasters shows how badly companies can go astray without proper regulation. Yet many companies fight to keep themselves free of oversight, as though it were an existential threat.
By Chris Albin-Lackey
The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights are a set of guidelines for States and companies to prevent, address and remedy human rights abuses committed in business operations. child labour
Until December 2000, the term “trafficking in persons” was not defined in international law, despite its incorporation in several international legal instruments.The long-standing failure to develop an agreed-upon definition of trafficking in pe...Read More
A major cause of forced labour in global supply chains is the charging of recruitment fees to migrant workers. Some companies have sought to reimburse workers charged these fees, many face serious challenges in doing so. Reimbursing worker-paid fe...Read More
For decades, workers, unions, students, and labour NGOs have joined together to try to hold global corporations accountable for the labour violations that have routinely taken place in their supply chains. Multi-faceted and often lengthy corporate c...Read More
The data in this report represents signals and cases from January 1, 2019 through December 31, 2019 and is accurate as of July 30, 2020. Cases of trafficking may be ongoing or new information may revealed to the National Hotline over time. Consequen...Read More