Bookphoria with Victoria – on Business and Human Rights, part 1

Bookphoria on Business and Human Rights is the focus for July and August this year! Victoria has selected 10 books that are going to be shared with you. It’s time to learn more about Business and Human rights!

How do business and human rights intersect?

Businesses have a responsibility to respect human rights both through their operations and their supply chains. This includes ensuring fair labor practices, non-discrimination, and environmental sustainability. By conducting due diligence, assessing human rights risks, and implementing appropriate measures, businesses can identify and address any adverse impacts they may have on human rights.

Ideally, businesses should establish human rights policies that set out their commitment to respect human rights. Implementing effective due diligence processes is crucial for identifying, preventing, and mitigating potential human rights impacts. This involves assessing risks, integrating human rights into decision-making processes, and monitoring the effectiveness of actions taken.

Businesses should also be transparent about their human rights practices and performance. This includes reporting on their efforts to respect human rights, disclosing relevant policies and practices, and providing information on progress and challenges. Transparent reporting holds businesses accountable and enables stakeholders to make informed choices and decisions.

Responsibilities

In addition to their operations, businesses also have a responsibility to address human rights risks in their supply chains. This involves understanding the social and environmental conditions in which their suppliers operate and taking steps to ensure that human rights are respected at all stages of production. This includes combating forced labor, child labor, and other exploitative practices.

If a business identifies that it has caused or contributed to adverse human rights impacts, it should provide appropriate remedies to affected individuals or communities. This may include compensation, remedial actions, and mechanisms for grievance redressal. Businesses should also be accountable for their human rights performance, both internally and externally.

By fulfilling their role in respecting human rights, businesses can contribute to the promotion of sustainable development, social justice, and a more inclusive and responsible global economy


Suggested reading on Business and Human Rights:

Combatting modern slavery : Why labour governance is failing and what we can do about it. / by Genevieve LeBaron. 2020.

ISBN 9781509513666

On the RWI shelf under 44 LEB

From the publisher: Over the last decade, the world’s largest corporations – from The Coca Cola Company to Amazon, Apple to Unilever – have taken up the cause of combatting modern slavery. Yet, by most measures, across many sectors and regions, severe labour exploitation continues to soar. Corporate social responsibility is not working. Why? In this landmark book, Genevieve LeBaron lifts the lid on a labour governance regime that is severely flawed and limited. She takes a close-up look at the millions of corporate dollars spent on anti-slavery networks, NGO partnerships, lobbying for new transparency legislation, and investment in social auditing and ethical certification schemes, to show how such efforts serve to bolster corporate growth and legitimacy as well as government reputations, whilst failing to protect the world’s most vulnerable workers. To eradicate modern slavery and human trafficking in global supply chains a new approach is needed; one that confronts corporate power and profits, dismantles exploitative business models, and regulates the booming private industry of accounting firms, social auditors, and consultants that has emerged to ‘monitor’ and ‘enforce’ labour standards. Only worker-driven initiatives that uphold fundamental rights can protect workers in the contemporary global economy and make forced labour a thing of the past.

When business harms human rights : affected communities that are dying to be heard / Karen Erica Bravo, Jena Martin, Tara L. Van Ho, editors. 2020.

ISBN: 9781785272264

Ebook permalink (for LU users)

From the publisher: The contemporary business and human rights regime speaks almost exclusively to states and business entities. The absence of victim voices has been a consistent challenge within the field in general as well as within the various literature and policy proposals. This challenge is so widely recognized that, for the first time, the UN made affected communities’ access to remedies the central theme at the November 2017 Forum on Business and Human Rights.

“When Business Harms Human Rights” is timely, exploring many of the key themes from the forum and offers an in-depth analysis of business-related human rights impacts and the challenges experienced by rightsholders in accessing remedies. The volume relies on reported narratives of and qualitative data on various incidents where businesses have intersected with affected communities. It allows the voice of the rightsholders to be heard and presents initial ideas regarding best practices that governments and businesses can undertake when engaging with communities. Most importantly, however, this edited volume engages with a larger audience primarily from the perspective of affected rightsholders.

Business, Human Rights and the Environment: The Evolving Agenda. / Chiara Macchi. 2022.

ISBN: 9462654786

Ebook permalink (for LU users)

From the publisher: More than ten years after the adoption of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, this book critically reviews the achievements, limits and next frontiers of business and human rights following the ‘protect, respect, remedy’ trichotomy. The UN Guiding Principles acted as a catalyst for hitherto unprecedented regulatory and judicial developments.
The monograph by Macchi proposes a functionalist reading of the state’s duty to regulate the transnational activities of corporations in order to protect human rights and adopts a holistic approach to the corporate responsibility to respect, arguing that environmental and climate due diligence are inherent dimensions of human rights due diligence.
In the volume emerging legislations are assessed on mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence, as well as the potential and limitations of a binding international treaty on business and human rights. The book also reviews groundbreaking litigation against transnational corporations, such as Lungowe v. Vedanta or Milieudefensie v. Shell, for their human rights and climate change impacts.


More Bookphoria with Victoria here! 

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