Impacts on Rightsholders of Human Rights Due Diligence and Forced Labour Trade Ban Laws

Event Details

This roundtable will bring together professionals working in CSOs and trade unions to discuss under the Chatham House Rule how mandatory human rights due diligence and forced labour trade ban laws are or can be used to deliver positive impacts for rightsholders and how such impact can be understood and measured.

This roundtable discussion is part of a broader research project that aims to inform a more effective design, implementation and evaluation of supply chain laws by responding to critical evidence gaps on the impacts of these laws on rightsholders.

This roundtable is convened by Dr Sofia Gonzalez De Aguinaga, BIICL's Research Leader on Business, ESG and Modern Slavery, with support from May Hylander, BIICL Visiting Fellow, and Judith Lanahan, University of Notre Dame.

Background

Forced Labour and less extreme forms of labour exploitation are some of the adverse human rights impacts connected to business operations in global value chains. Forced labour alone affects an estimated 28 million people worldwide and generates approximately $236 billion in illegal proceeds annually. To address this, a range of different supply chain measures have been developed across the world. Notably, mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence (mHREDD) laws and forced labour trade ban (FLTB) laws have received overwhelming support from multiple stakeholders worldwide, including in the Global South.

mHREDD laws and FLTB laws differ in many ways including on their design, scope, and enforcement. Nonetheless, they are expected to complement each other and work in tandem to deliver positive impacts on rightsholders—including workers, Indigenous Peoples, and people with lived experience—whose human rights have been affected or could potentially be affected by business in global value chains.

The evidence on the impacts of these regulatory measures on rightsholders is nascent and concerns remain about the actual positive impacts these regulatory measures can have on rightsholders. This roundtable focuses on understanding the role of trade unions and CSOs in using these tools as levers for delivering positive impacts for rightsholders.

Agenda

Section 1: Introduction
Section 2: Understandings of impact on rightsholders of mHREDD and FLTB laws
Section 3: Experiences using mHREDD and FLTBs as tools to leverage positive impacts for rightsholders
Section 4: Foward looking
Section 5: Conclusion

Registration

This is a private event by invitation only. If you are a professional working within trade unions or CSOs and are interested in joining this event, please email Dr Sofia Gonzalez De Aguinaga at s.deaguinaga@binghamcentre.biicl.org.