This week the Danish National Contact Point for the OECD guidelines on multinational enterprises cast a damning light on Scandinavian company PWT Group for its failure to adequately assess dangers linked to the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on 24 April 2013, killing 1,138 people and injuring more than 2,000 others....
In June the Joint Committee on Human Rights announced a new inquiry into human rights and business. The inquiry is looking at the government’s progress on implementing the UNGPs through its National Action Plan (NAP), published in 2013 and updated in May 2016. This follows an earlier JCHR inquiry into business and human rights conducted in...
The Modern Slavery Act 2015 requires commercial organisations operating in the UK with an annual turnover above £36m to produce a statement setting out the steps they are taking to address and prevent the risk of modern slavery in their operations and supply chains. A number of key stakeholders that were influential in securing the...
The UK’s updated BHR action plan was published on 12 May, following a written ministerial statement in Parliament. Visible, high-level political endorsement sends a powerful signal to business so it’s a pity that there’s no Ministerial Foreword included in the update, but despite this the plan clearly reasserts the UNGPs and the government’s expectation that...
A response to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills consultation on the Non-Financial Reporting Directive: A call for views on effective reporting alongside proposals to implement EU requirements. Download the report >>
On 3 March, after a two year negotiation process, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted a set of Recommendations to its member States on Business and Human Rights. The European Coalition for Corporate Justice, Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) participated in...
In autumn, following our successful campaign for the introduction of the Transparency in Supply Chains (TISC) clause into the Modern Slavery Act 2015, we participated in discussions designed to inform the content of the accompanying Home Office statutory guidance for commercial organisations required to report under the new law. While the Home Office guidance gives...
There has been a welcome flurry of early compliance reports from companies in anticipation of the first reporting deadline under the UK Modern Slavery Act. However, according to corporate accountability groups the CORE Coalition and Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, the majority of these early company statements on modern slavery in supply chains appear...
A corporate accountability group has welcomed news that for the first time, a British businessman has been prosecuted and sentenced for human trafficking offences, but questions why there has been no prosecution in a similar case involving a company described as the ‘worst UK gangmaster ever’. Download the report »
