Working Groups: Proposals and Conclusions

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Slow SeminarBusiness and Human Rights: What Now?

Barcelona, 16 and 17 June 2011

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Organisation

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Organisation

1. Culture / Values / Education

• Greater public awareness– Elevating the playing field, reaching more companies – Designing integrated reports and making them compulsory– More transparency– Incentives

• Exports

• Finances

• Education– Secondary

• Cross-curricular development and human rights issues– In mathematics– In the sciences – In the social studies

– MBA• Educating on the legal aspects of social and environmental impacts

• Learning more about social stakeholders like NGOs, the United Nations and unions

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1. Culture / Values / Education

• Inside enterprises– Getting the different departments to work together– Unlearning– Initiatives

• Not just pressure• Provide incentives for due diligence

• Cross-cultural: Training and human rights– Integrating awareness and the universality of the rights– Inviting non-Western perspectives

• Professional opportunities for women– Not quotas for managerial boards– Begin with

• Maternity policies• Schedules that help balance work and family

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Organisation

• Opportunities– European directive for companies operating abroad: from soft law to hard law– The ombudsman in each country should encompass human rights and enterprise

issues– Get client defenders involved– Consensus and backing for Ruggie’s efforts

2. Instruments and Norms

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2. Instruments and Norms

• Initiatives– Assimilation / empowerment

• Website targeted at board members– Inventory of instruments– Translation of texts into business jargon

• Dissemination targeted at– Administrative board– Independent board members– Risk committee

– Operation• Incentives

– Positive– Negative

• Cost – benefit analysis• Risk – return analysis• Key monitoring indicators• Taking human rights to management

– Training / Capacity building• Practical in situ training• Programmes adapted to each enterprise• Strengthening advocacy and the critical mass

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Organisation

3. Incentives/ Market Mechanisms

• Opportunities– Globalisation of capital markets– Democratisation of the use of intelligent mobile phones and their applications

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3. Incentives/ Market Mechanisms

• Initiatives– Transparency in markets

• Design of labels with information on CSR issues: via mobiles and website

• Publicise the supply chain

– Intense shareholder activism • To ensure that all the stakeholders participate, not just shareholders

• Open up a prior consultation period

• Enterprises’ obligatory response

– Ensuring that other states’ reserve funds take ESG - CSR – Human Rights criteria into account

• Investments in these funds should be public

• The black list of enterprises and the reasons they are blacklisted should be published

– Creating new sustainability indexes

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Contact info

maria.prandi@uab.cat

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With the support of: