Join us on December 8th at 15.30 for a panel discussion on how a law on human rights and environmental due diligence in the UK could help prevent corporate abuse and realise children’s rights, in the UK and abroad.

Business is a central part of our society and vital to the lives of children. The Coronavirus pandemic has highlighted how interconnected our economies are. UK businesses and supply chains operate around the globe. They connect us to children labouring to produce cocoa in Côte d’Ivoire, to children of factory workers in Bangladesh producing our clothes as well as to children around the world using apps and products developed by British Tech companies.

All these impacts can undermine the realisation of children’s rights. However, with the necessary will and appropriate preventative action by businesses, i.e. human rights and environmental due diligence, many of these abuses could be avoided or reduced. Some companies are leading the way in taking action, however, there are still too many that are failing to meet their responsibility to respect human rights and the environment. Fewer still are adequately integrating child rights into such efforts.

The current rate of change is extremely slow and voluntary action alone will never be enough to bring the scale needed at the speed required. The legislative landscape of corporate accountability is changing; legislation imposing mandatory requirements to conduct human rights and environmental due diligence has been adopted or is under consideration in other countries. UK Government action is needed now.

Unicef UK’s paper “Preventing corporate abuse and realising child rights: the case for UK legislation on human rights and environmental due diligence”, which will be presented at the event, sets out why the UK Government should legally require UK businesses and businesses operating in the UK to conduct human rights and environmental due diligence and why it should ensure accountability for abuses and environmental harms; it also explains the necessity for this to explicitly integrate child rights. It also provides key principles and supporting measures that the new piece of legislation should contain in order to be effective and to fully ensure children’s rights are accounted for.

The event will be an opportunity to hear from experts about the impact of business, in particular the cocoa sector, on children’s rights; challenges in accessing remedies for corporate abuses, especially when victims are children; the need for the UK to introduce a law on human rights and environmental due diligence to help preventing or reducing such abuses and the need for children’s rights to be integrated in such legislation and its implementation.

SPEAKERS

Maria Pia Bianchetti, Private Sector Policy and Influencing Manager, Unicef UK

Muhammad Rafiq Khan, Chief, Child Protection, UNICEF Ghana

Richard Meeran, Partner & Head of the international department, Leigh Day

MODERATOR

Lin Taylor, Journalist, Thomson Reuters Foundation