 Aloha and welcome to Cooper Union. What's happening with human rights around the world? Today it's exciting to be engaging one of the foremost experts on business and human rights. Today we'll be looking at the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights, Protect, Respect, and Remedy for All. Thank you so much, Surya Deva, for taking time, not only from your busy teaching schedule, but also coordinating right now the second annual forum on business and human rights in the Pacific. Thank you, Joshua. It's my pleasure to be on the show. It is such an honor to have someone with your experience, but also your dedication to the issue. I've been able to fortunately see that over many years and really we're also celebrating the 10th year of the guiding principles. Could you maybe share with the world what are the guiding principles and why are they so important in the field of human rights? Definitely. So the UN guiding principles on business and human rights were adopted unanimously by the Human Rights Council in June 2011. They were developed by late Professor John Draghi during his six years of mandate 2005-2011. These guiding principles are international soft standards which basically tell what states need to do, what private sector businesses need to do in terms of respecting human rights and remediating adverse impacts. So the guiding principles are built around three pillars and that's where it comes to protect respect and remedy. So states have a duty to protect human rights against their violations by the business enterprises. All business enterprises have a responsibility to respect all human rights and then both states and businesses have their respective duties and responsibilities to provide remediation if there are adverse impact on human rights. I think the guiding principles are very important because before 2011 it was a very polarized debate in the business and human rights field about soft versus binding rules and I think the guiding principles provided a pathway that how we can move forward and I think after the adoption in 2011 in the last 10 years we have seen significant progress in terms of their adoption, in terms of the uptake by different actors and I think because of that they are really highly influential throughout the world. Of course the implementation remains a challenge but as normative as standard they definitely provide a very important ER district for both the states and businesses and other actors including investors to understand what they need to do. Oh that's really good and you also brought up John Ruggie and also David Weissbrod. Unfortunately both of them had just passed but they did a really good job at planting the seeds to address and include corporations, multi-nationals and smaller enterprise and businesses because when we look at the history of human rights there's been a lot said about states duties and their role as duty bears but we also look especially since it is Thanksgiving here in the U.S. the role of corporations with the king, with Columbus there's always been many businesses having impact on indigenous and communities around the world so this was the first time as you shared Ruggie was able to diplomatically bring everything together and codify it in these guiding principles and as you said how many principles are there and what are some of the main points people should be aware of on top of these three elements that you share to protect respect and remedy? There are 31 principles in total and before I go a little bit into those principles I think you mentioned Ruggie and Professor Weissbrod I mean so it's a sad year I would say for the business and human rights community because these two legendary figures in the field have unfortunately left us but they created definitely and planted seeds they created a momentum in different ways and I think the draft UN norms also created in the groundwork I would say for the UN guiding principles and also I would say the treaty process that is going on now to negotiate a binding instrument so I think those are complementary processes in my view the soft standards and the hardening of those standards. Now let me briefly talk about the 31 principles in the UN guiding principles so we have pillar one which is the state duty to protect human rights we have 10 principles here and basically the expectation is that the government should ensure by taking a number of steps legal steps, policy measures, rules and regulations, creating incentives to ensure that all business enterprises within their territory and jurisdiction respect human rights and I think the word jurisdiction here is quite critical in my view because businesses have transnational footprint and it is critical that the home states of these businesses also have an obligation to ensure those companies respect human rights wherever they operate. Of course the pillar one has several components for instance there is a key role for the when the state is an economic actor you should be taking lead lead by example as we call it and that happens when let us say public procurement is involved or when we have a state on enterprises which are involved in doing some business and I think then the expectation is they will also respect human rights then there is a greater focus also on policy coherence because we would like the trade and investment regimes and the human rights regime to work together we don't want a situation in which the governments are trying to attract investment and they ignore labor rights and human rights and the climate change now that's becoming a big issue and I think that policy coherence is is a key component of pillar one when it comes to pillar two Joshua as you know it talks about responsibility of all business enterprises to respect all human rights now what is crucial is that this is an independent responsibility of businesses so irrespective of what the states do and do not do businesses are expected to respect all human rights at all times wherever they are operating and this responsibility is over and above the legal obligations that those businesses may have in certain situations I would say a key contribution of pillar two is this language of human rights due diligence this is a four-step process and businesses are expected to know and show how they respect human rights and the tool that is provided by pillar two of the UN guiding principles is the UN sorry the human rights due diligence now let me quickly touch upon the pillar three which is about access to remedy now prevention as all of us know working in the human rights field is ideal it is desirable but prevention is never full proof there are always adverse impact on human rights and then in those particular situations the individuals and the affected communities should be able to secure access to effective remedy and in this particular context the pillar three provides for three broad possibilities of seeking remedies judicial mechanism like the courts second is a state-based non-judicial mechanism these could be national human rights institutions which are very very vital but we could also have national contact points which are established by OECD countries and the third possibility is that they could be some operational level grievance mechanism like businesses may establish something to provide remediation or international financial institutions like Asia Development Bank or the world banks lending arm they can establish those grievance mechanism so I think that is in brief a quick summary of what these three principles are pillars of the UN guiding principles handle well that's absolutely vital especially it's education and awareness raising and also capacity building of the community and the corporation in the country because many people aren't aware of that and bringing up widespread I remember being in the UN subcommission and him bringing those issues forward and seeing him advance those for the norms and then being part of rugby's consultation process with different indigenous peoples what was so exciting when they were adopted as you said in 2011 was what next and I remember the negotiations with Scandinavia hosting in the Human Rights Council in that June and one idea was how then do we advance and build on that important work of Weisbrot and now rugby and the idea was a UN working group on business and human rights and the idea of a UN forum on business and human rights and it's exciting to see you there representing Asia Pacific and also your experience even being as chair did you share a bit about what the working group is and how those five members operate and then maybe talk about some highlights of your time on the working group definitely that would be my pleasure so the UN working group on business and human rights was established in the same year 2011 so the working group comprises five members representing different regions of the world I represent Asia Pacific but we have colleagues coming from Africa Eastern Europe Western Europe and the other regions and the late in America so the primary mandate of the working group is to promote their dissemination and effective implementation of UN guiding principles and business and human rights and we work together with governments private sector entities industry associations civil society organizations NHRIs civil society groups trade unions academia lawyers almost everyone because we adopt a collaborative approach and I think earlier you mentioned about the importance of raising awareness and building capacity we cannot underline and highlight the importance of raising awareness and capacity building enough because unless companies and government officials know about UN guiding principles they cannot really implement that and I think that is what we do and I see this interview as part of that process as well raising awareness reaching out to new audiences in different parts of the world and I think we keep on doing it you mentioned the UN forum and like the UN guiding principles the UN forum also started around the same time and this year next week in fact we have the 10th UN forum on business and human rights because of the COVID pandemic which is continuing the forum will take place virtually for three days from 29th of November to the 1st of December but it used to be an in-person event the largest event on the planet at this point of time at least on business and human rights where more than 2000 people will come from more than 130 countries but I think the technology during the pandemic has also provided us an opportunity to reach out to the global south in particular who are not able to travel to Geneva in person so we also see this as an advantage that we are able to bring on board people who are perhaps not as included in the forum structure apart from the forum we also do a number of other activities to promote demand it as you know we do two country visits in a year because of the pandemic again there was some disruption to those visits but I had a chance to visit Italy in late September early October and of course let us see which countries we visit in next year we also accept complaints complaints against governments complaint against private sector if there are allegations that they have not followed the UN guiding principles and of course as you know just we also release guidance that happens in the form of two reports that we do every year where we try to unpack the UN guiding principles different components and finally let me briefly talk about my experience of the working group I joined the working group on the 1st of May 2016 so I'm in my final year of the mandate because as you know the mandate is three plus three six years in maximum so I'll finish at the end of April next year 2022 for me the experience has been quite satisfying of course my mandate is not limited to Asia Pacific but I have pushed the agenda more I would say in the Asia Pacific and one thing which I take a lot of satisfaction is that we started those sub-regional approaches in the Asia Pacific we started with South Asia forum the East Asia forum was already going on led by UNDP but I created the South Asia forum in collaboration with UNDP and as you know last year we created the specific forum in collaboration with the office of the High Commission for the Pacific and hopefully let us see if we can pull it off the idea is also to do something in the Middle East so this sub-regional approach is very very vital in addition to that I'm also working on drafting an information note on climate change because the UN guiding principles don't mention climate change or environmental rights anywhere so but but there are deep linkages between human rights and climate change so how do we draw those connections together so this information note will provide guidance on that particular aspect of course earlier I would also like to mention a couple of quickly other reports that I led one is around the gender aspect so I think that was the report to the Human Rights Council in 2019 and basically it put the gender dimensions in the center of the business and human rights discourse and earlier than that I did reports around access to remedy so that was a 27 report on what is an effective remedy and more recently I did a report around the role of national human rights institutions in the business and humanist agenda and of course my final report which was to the General Assembly which I presented in last month in fact was on international investment agreements that how can states bring in human rights and environmental issues and climate change considerations into their investment agreements and I think that links nicely with the policy coherence point that I was talking about earlier as part of pillar one so I think that is a quick fire rapid fire summary of what the working group does and what I have been doing in the last five and a half years as part of the working group it's an excellent summary and just gives a glimpse into the good work that's being done regarding this very important field and as you described the forum and it reminded me of being there at the first handful of those and these are it is true there were more different elements of the economy of the ecology all people coming together former High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson everyone looking at the important contribution of the guiding principles and so maybe you could share with us then what have been some of the innovative initiatives that have taken place since the guiding principles were introduced and some of the ways that the forum has been able to really those innovative initiatives from the international down to like the island's level to bring those guiding principles alive. Yes so I would say that the working group just completed a project we call it the stock-taking report they're two dimensions of this project one is to review the progress we have made in the last 10 years implementing the guiding principles and the second component is the roadmap ahead where we should be going in the next 10 years so I'll invite the audience to look at our website and look at those two particular documents which should provide more details but let me highlight the positives what have we achieved in the last 10 years and I will start with this point that UN guiding principles provide a common language everyone whether these are states or companies or industry associations or trade unions or NHRIs or civil society groups or academia or lawyers or investors for that matter all of us can talk to each other in the field of business and human rights through this common language of human guiding principles and business and human rights I think this is quite a remarkable achievement to begin with because if we speak a common language then it is easier to collaborate because we're talking about the same thing and we are moving in the same direction perhaps the second key contribution is I would say that UN guiding principles are accepted by almost all stakeholders and slowly we see the uptake and the adoption of national action plans on business and human rights in all parts of the world earlier in the in the beginning of this last decade most of the national action plans were from European countries and in the last couple of years we have seen progress in Asia for instance we have three countries Japan Thailand and Pakistan adopting national action plan several other countries like India also Malaysia Indonesia Vietnam other countries as well they're working on national action plan on business and human rights in Africa also we have Kenya and Uganda adopting national action plans and of course in Latin America also we have Chile and also Mexico adopting national action plan on business and human rights so I think that is sorry sorry not Mexico it's Colombia my apologies for that so Mexico was in the drafting stage but I think there are some issues there but they haven't yet closed the line so what I'm trying to suggest here is that in different world regions we can see definitely a significant progress in terms of the uptake the other aspect that I would like to highlight is the alignment of other standards with UN guiding principles so whether these are the OECD guidelines or this is ILO tripartite declaration for MNE's all these are aligned with the UN guiding principles and the related aspect is that the UN guiding principles are also shaping low end policy and that is what we call the hardening of soft standards especially in Europe we have those standards coming into the form of mandatory human rights due diligence legislation and let us see what the draft comes out next year because European Commission is set to release a draft of that for for the entire Europe and this will have a global implication because this law is going to apply extra territorially so any company operating in Europe would have to comply with it and I think that's how it's going to capture the supply chains in the global south as well so I think these are I would say significant achievements at the same time going forward there are many things we need to improve we need to bridge this gap between what governments and companies are saying on paper and what their practice is we need to definitely improve access to remedy and corporate accountability a lot of work needs to be done about that we also need to strengthen and provide civic space because as you know human rights defenders are under attack in almost all world regions and we can't really think of implementing UN guiding principles effectively unless we have a free civil society and space for human as defenders to operate so I think there are many more challenges that are there new technologies are also emerging climate crisis is a big issue so I think there's a lot more works needs to be done but the guiding principles provide a pathway of course this is not the end of the world in terms of the standards this is merely a floor not the roof but hopefully we will build more ambitious standards going forward and we will also implement the UN guiding principles better going forward and you can definitely see now where the roots are really taking shape for the business and human rights around the world with all those examples and as you mentioned climate change I just returned from Glasgow and the UN framework on climate change COP 26 so I know that language at your draft will be very valuable to the rest of the world maybe you can share when that will be coming out or if there's still a time for people to contribute and that also could lead into the exciting second forum on business and human rights which I know you spearheaded and that's now taking place could you maybe share a little bit about some of the issues coming out of the national hubs of the second forum on business and human rights and some of the issues you see related to the guiding principles in our region yes of course let me talk about the climate change information not so you mentioned COP 26 and there is always this struggle to connect human rights and the climate changes and you can see that the struggle continues including at COP 26 so this information not which I hopefully will finalize by the end of next month will unpack what UN guiding principles mean for states and private sector and others in terms of climate change there's still a small window for stakeholders to get in touch with me if they have any ideas but this is not a full report this is just in short information note but hopefully in future there will be more work done around this by the working group in terms of the second UN Pacific forum on business and human rights as I mentioned to you earlier this is part of the working groups regional or sub regional strategy to push the agenda in different parts of the world because the local context is very very crucial and if we don't take into account the local political social economic and cultural context it is difficult to implement the UN guiding principles let us take Indonesia Indonesia has more than 10,000 islands so implementing UN guiding principles in Indonesia is very different how it would look like in a country like us which is very vast country with 50 states but it is not like the small island of Indonesia or let us talk about Mongolia where people move around in the same country right so I think those local contexts are very very relevant or we can talk about the Solomon Islands again about around 1000 islands but they face quite serious crisis coming from the climate change right so I think that local context is very much relevant and we're keeping that in mind we started this forum in collaboration with the office of the high commissioner for human rights but before that we build the background and Joshua you're part of some of those workshops that we did with the diplomacy training program and the office of the high commissioner we did those workshops in Fiji and in PNG and now we have been doing those workshops virtually so they they built that background of raising awareness about UN guiding principles and building the capacity around that and I think that was quite significant starting point which provided a groundwork for the forum now the forum is taking place so at this year we did something innovative so the forum started on Monday 22nd of November today is the final day of the forum and on the first day it was a private what we call national hubs national hubs were not public hubs but these were the hubs that we created in different countries and we wanted to put the rights holders in the pacific countries at the center of the forum so we could pull off these national hubs in four countries Solomon islands Vanuatu, Fiji and PNG in PNG I think it was entirely virtual but it was also hybrid in other places and then we allowed some sharing from those four hubs to take place on the first formal day of the forum yesterday and the people are engaging in those particular issues whether this is about illegal logging, land grabbing, environmental pollution issues, climate change or gender-based violence all these are very important issues for the pacific and I think the guiding principles have a role to play in how we can work together to overcome some of the challenges. No that was really important and it's exciting to see everything that's being raised even deep seabed mining as we're coming close to the end of the program and we won't be able to see each other together at the forum on business and human rights could you maybe give an overview of what will happen in Geneva for that 10th anniversary as we look at this decade of action and I know you mentioned earlier the treaty that's also emerging maybe you could can close with some insights to those important international institutions and how they are becoming a reality for businesses and communities around the plan I think there is let me start with quickly about the treaty process I think there is a growing recognition that we should not see any conflict between soft standards and the binding standards we need both and the treaty process should be seen in this particular context and the working group also issued a statement last month that we see this complementary relationship and to create a global level playing field the government should work together to create binding rules at the international level but of course we need binding rules at the national and regional level as well so the process is moving ahead but of course we need more political support from developed countries to this process so that they can push these in that together in my view about the forum this will be an entirely virtually event taking place over three days starting on 29th of November to the 1st of December there will be a number of sessions covering a range of issues but a key focus this year is on the 10th years anniversary of the UN guiding principles in particular where we want us to be there in 2030 next 10 years right so that is the roadmap it will be launched on the first day and then we will try to integrate the roadmap into different sessions throughout the three days and we very much hope that the real thing is that whatever we say we try to implement in practice I think that is that is crucial right and we very much hope that going forward the continued push about the better implementation of UN guiding principles will continue and the forum like this in Geneva or the regional forum in the pacific could definitely be a game changer going forward in my view excellent and that overlaps very well with the UN sustainable development goals and the 17 global goals and it's been an honor to watch you organize and operate in Asia and the pacific to bring these guiding principles from paper into practice and thank you so much for your two terms on this important aspect and I want you to know it's also inspired me as we've been accepted into a new cohort here for travel to change and native wine hospitality to educate tourism industry about the guiding principles so we're doing the work here in Hawaii as well so thank you so much for joining us and I know our time has passed but I look forward to meet you at the next forum either in the pacific or in Geneva Mahalo so pleasure meeting you and doing this with you take care and see you again sometime