Crash course in BHR and NAPs

It has been more than a decade since the United Nations’ Human Rights Council endorsed the “Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.” Yet the knowledge of parliamentarians and political party leaders on this issue remains rather rudimentary compared to that of rights activists, lawyers, and business leaders.

And so in November, the Asia Centre, in cooperation with FNF, organized a regional training workshop on business and human rights primarily for parliamentarians and political party leaders in Asia. Participants in the two-day workshop (28-30 November) held in Bangkok, Thailand included representatives of CALD member-parties from Thailand, Taiwan, Philippines, Singapore, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Mongolia. Acting as facilitators were Asia Centre Regional Director James Gomez, Access Now Asia-Pacific Campaigner Golda Benjamin, and M. Ravi Law founder M. Ravi.

The workshop had also been inspired by the chapter contributed by CALD to the Asia Centre and FNF publication Business and Human Rights in Southeast Asia: Developing National Action Plans. In the chapter, which focuses on the development of BHR National Action Plans (NAPs), CALD observes that “the engagement of parliamentarians in developing the NAP was noticeably absent… despite the consensus that parliamentarians can contribute, in a number of ways, to the process of drafting and implementing the NAP.” In other words, much more needs to be done to democratize the NAP process and internalize BHR principles.

“Our fight to advance Business and Human Rights—like our broader struggle to embed democracy and liberal democratic values in Asian society—is still a work-inprogress,” said CALD Secretary General Francis Gerald ‘Blue’ Abaya at the Bangkok workshop. He expressed his hope that the training could provide some guideposts on how to advance BHR in the participants’ respective countries. “After all,” he said, “human rights are an issue that should concern us all.”

One area where parliamentarians and political party leaders can push for BHR is in the development of the NAPs. In the panel he moderated, CALD Executive Director Lito Arlegue provided an overview of the NAPs process in each country, as well as the openings where political actors can intervene. Participants tackled these issues more substantively in the group discussions that followed, and then reported the results of their discussions to the plenary.

The workshop also provided the participants an opportunity to explore the “alphabet soup of acronyms” that accompany BHR , such as Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD), Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP), among others. There were discussions as well on the role of design professionals and religious organizations in advancing human rights at the country, community, and workplace levels.