Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Business and
Human Rights
Are you a researcher, activist or human rights advocate who wants to hold corporations accountable for the human rigths violations they are involved with?
Have you identified human rights violations and would like the tools to map out the implicated businesses and the strategies to increase the impact of your advocacy?
Get started with research on business and human rights
EuroMed Rights has prepared a series of short videos with experts and collected resources to help you get started linking businesses with violations to use in your human rights advocacy.
Each video has FR and AR subtitles, availables on the YouTube option.1/5 Applying corporate research to human rights advocacy
Using corporate accountability in your human rights advocacy opens up a range of creative approaches. For example it may lead you to focus on new institutions and states to target, additional legal frameworks and can contribute to strengthening your voice using media.
In this video, Kathryn Ravey from Al Haq explains what possibilities business and human rights research offer to human rights advocates and why you should consider this approach.
Resources: Investigation concepts What Makes an Investigation — The Kit 1.0 documentation (exposingtheinvisible.org)
2/5 Assessing a company’s relationship to a human rights violation
When establishing a relation between a human rights violation and a corporation, it is important to assess the nature of the relationship and the degree to which the company is responsible for the violation.
In this video, Katharine Booth from OECD Watch explains how to determine in what way a company is involved in a violation by using the causing, contributing or directly linked framework.
Resources: The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights GuidingPrinciplesBusinessHR_EN.pdf (ohchr.org) ; The OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises MNE Guidelines – Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (oecd.org)
3/5 Tracing human rights abuses in supply chains
Tracing human rights or environmental abuses on the ground to global corporations can prove highly effective in achieving meaningful remedy for workers and affected communities.
In this video, Jonathan Mead from Transparentem explains which tools and approaches to consider when getting started mapping out supply chains.
Resources: Panjiva.com ; Importgenius.com ; Opensupplyhub.org ; Opencorporates.com ; Marinetraffic.com.
4/5 Corporate structure research: follow the money
If you want to understand the full range of stakeholders involved in a human rights violation, ‘follow the money research’ can be invaluable. It can help you map out additional pressure points and targets for advocacy.
In this video, David from SOMO explains what kind of information is important to establish about the company you’re looking at, and how.
Resources: 5 Tips for Better Searching – Smithsonian Libraries and Archives / Unbound (si.edu) ; Investor websites (e.g. Yahoo Finance, Market Screener) ; OpenCorporates ; Investigative Dashboard ; Subscription-based databases (e.g. Refinitiv Eikon, Moody’s Orbis) ; ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database ; Databases: Refinitiv Eikon, Bureau Van Dijk Orbis, Lexis Nexis.
5/5 Advocacy tools and strategies for corporate accountability
You have collected documentation on corporate involvement in human rights violations. And now what? You have several avenues to use your evidence for advocacy, for example direct engagement with the parent company, making a media story, submit a case with the OECD National Contact Point, creating a transnational campaign, making submissions to human rights bodies or using strategic litigation.
In this video, Lydia de Leeuw from SOMO explains ways you can think about doing business and human rights advocacy and what you need to do it.
Ressources: Counter-strategies – Mind the Gap ; Human Rights & Grievance Mechanisms – SOMO.
Other resource that may be useful in your work: Safety First! — The Kit 1.0 documentation (exposingtheinvisible.org)