It is a decade since the UN mandate to develop what became the 2011 Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
At the inter-governmental (Geneva) level, the consensus that existed in adopting the GPs in 2011 has not held. There is some sense of a return to the polarised, partly ideological debates of the pre-2000s on how best to regulate the impact that businesses may have on human rights.
Yet what happens in Geneva is only one part of what should be a range of regulatory, educative, advocacy, capacity-building, and other measures within countries, industry sectors and supply chains. Many of these will be driven by business leaders themselves and not necessarily premised on the idea that the only 'regulation' that counts is top-down legislative action.
These issues are summarised in a March report referenced in previous blogs on this issue.
This short post (from the Australian National University, where I work now) is simply to foreshadow a coming report in September, written as part of the Chatham House programme in international law.
This report (see launch event spiel here) will look at the next decade of the broad 'business and human rights' field, based on analysis of current trends and their likely trajectory.
Jo
