Human rights in global supply chains: Corporate social responsibility and public procurement in the European Union

The global supply chains of multinational enterprises are complex and multi-tiered, often involving many stages of production and spanning several jurisdictions. Important questions remain about how to ensure that human rights are respected in these supply chains, including how multinational enterprises are to exercise the responsibility to respect human rights in their supply chains and the role that can be played by states in protecting human rights outside of their borders. This article focuses specifically on the potential for states to use public procurement as a tool to promote human rights protection beyond their borders by purchasing goods from companies that ensure that human rights are respected throughout the whole supply chain of the procured product. The article considers the responsibilities of states and business enterprises with respect to global supply chains, including the recognised relevance of public procurement in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights as part of the ‘state-business nexus’. The remaining sections analyse how the historical role of public procurement in pursuing social aims has developed to encompass matters of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and of human rights specifically; the development of the EU’s CSR strategy and the approach of the EU to linking this with developments in the EU procurement regime; and, finally, the extent to which the recently revised EU procurement regime supports the use of procurement as a tool to promote human rights in global supply chains

Monitoring Human Rights in Global Supply Chains. Insights and policy recommendations for Civil Society, Global Brands and Academics

Global production systems are organised across contractually and geographically distributed supply chains. As a consequence of this model there exists a ‘governance gap’ in global supply chains which results in limited regulatory and contractual oversight of human rights and labour standards in the factories in the lower tiers of production. Despite a surge in instruments and initiatives designed to address supply chain failures the problems persist. Supply chain monitoring provides the means by which a failure to meet agreed or desired standards or processes can be identified and appropriate action taken. Traditional monitoring models include in-house monitoring of codes of conduct undertaken by corporate brands, third party auditing and multi-stakeholder initiatives. Numerous problems with traditional monitoring models have been discussed by academics and civil society including inherent conflicts of interest, the partial, ‘snap-shot’ nature of auditing processes, the structural problems inherent in distributed supply chains which place downward pressure on factories who are producing goods and components for global brands, the lack of appropriate monitoring methodologies to protect workers from repercussions if they speak out about poor conditions and the lack of effective mechanisms through which workers can raise grievances and seek remedies. Our interviews with a small sample of representatives from labour rights and monitoring organisations build upon existing work on the limitations of supply chain monitoring and give indications of ways forward for the development of more effective monitoring models

Promoting responsible electronics supply chains through public procurement

• The electronics industry supply chain is particularly complex, with many companies involved in the manufacturing process and most of them far removed from the end user. Events involving well known electronics brands have highlighted the exploitative and unsafe conditions under which many workers in the supply chain operate. • Public procurement contracts worldwide are estimated to be worth one-thousand-billion euros annually and account for 16 per cent of GDP in the European Union. Because of their considerable buying power, public authorities, through their public procurement contracts, hold the potential for significant leverage in social and sustainability issues. • Within the European Union, public procurement contracts are subject to EU rules which aim to ensure non-discrimination and transparency in the procurement process. These rules also determine the extent to which social considerations are permitted within the procurement process. • The best opportunity to introduce social considerations is within the contract performance stage of the process, which allows the buyer to specify the conditions to be performed once the contract has been granted. • Developing contract performance conditions which apply throughout the supply chain is challenging for several reasons. Two approaches to using such conditions are available: the use of cascading contract conditions and a contractor-led due diligence approach. • The due diligence approach is suggested as a preferable option since it is less onerous in overall terms, is a responsive model and therefore may be better suited to addressing supply chain problems. It is also more practicable from a contractual perspective. • The necessary features of an effective contract performance condition include requirements for the disclosure of factory locations, determination of labour conditions and standards to be required, provision for access to factories and monitoring and for remediation and the imposition of penalties

Franco’s victims in Spain: the long road towards justice and recognition

In today’s Spain there is a lack of public discourse recognizing the unbalanced treatment suffered by the victims of Franco, both during the civil war and the repression that followed, during the dictatorship, transition and four decades of democracy. There has also been limited discussion regarding their legal rights as victims. This chapter argues that in Spain official narratives and amnesty have not only resulted in the denial of the legal status of victims and their social definition as such, but largely in the refusal to self-define as a victim by those who suffered violations and repression by Franco’s troops and government

Combating trafficking in human beings and labour exploitation in supply chains - Guidance for OSCE procurement

This procurement guidance is a key step in rolling out the implementation of anti-trafficking measures in OSCE’s own procurement across its executive structures and aligning the OSCE’s mandates with its own processes. The guidance’s aim is to support procurement and anti-trafficking staff in the OSCE with the background knowledge to implement anti-trafficking measures in procurement activities; alongside training workshops, procurement risk analyses and local action plans. Preventing trafficking and labour exploitation in supply chains is no easy task. By taking these first steps, the OSCE is developing further expertise, and is supporting OSCE participating States and the international community in their ongoing efforts to prevent trafficking for forced labour in their supply chains

EU Human Rights Due Diligence Legislation: Monitoring, Enforcement and Access to Justice for Victims

This briefing explores options for monitoring and enforcement of European Union (EU) human rights due diligence legislation, and how such legislation should contribute to access to justice and remedy for victims of human rights abuses linked to the operations of businesses inside or operating from Member States (MS). The briefing reviews existing due diligence and disclosure schemes and considers the feasibility of specific options for monitoring, enforcement and access to remedy within a future EU due diligence law. The briefing recommends that such legislation should require effective monitoring via company-level obligations, national and EU-level measures, including repositories of due diligence reports, lists of companies required to report, information request procedures, monitoring bodies and delegated legislation or guidance further elaborating on due diligence under the law. Regarding enforcement, the law should inter alia require MS to determine appropriate penalties for non-compliance and to establish enforcement rights for interested parties. Finally, on remedy, the law should, besides requiring companies to establish complaint mechanisms, provide for national and EU measures, including requirements that MS ensure effective means of remedy and redress for victims and establish or identify bodies to investigate abuses, initiate enforcement and support victims

Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding: Considerations for policymakers

It is critical to take into account the ways in which policies and programming in peacebuilding and transitional justice may be not only contradictory but also complementary. This brief examines the interaction of the following peacebuilding activities with transitional justice processes: Disarmament, Demobilization, and Re-integration (DDR), Security Sector Reform (SSR) and rule of law promotion

Just peace? Peacebuilding and rule of law in Africa: Lessons for policymakers

This policy paper encapsulates the key findings of a research project undertaken by the Centre on Human Rights in Conflict (CHRC) of the University of East London School of Law on rule of law in African countries emerging from violent conflict, funded by the British Academy. The CHRC commissioned a range of experts and practitioners from around the world to examine and assess contemporary international efforts at promoting rule of law reform in peacebuilding operations and development assistance. Country studies examined in depth the experiences of a number of African countries—the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Sudan—while thematic studies examined rule of law as part of peacebuilding in comparative perspective, the role of traditional justice, and specific aspects of rule of law in the African context. These studies will be published as a book entitled Just Peace? Peacebuilding and rule of law in Africa

Chapter 1 - Sustainable public procurement of infrastructure and human rights: linkages and gaps

The need for processes to develop infrastructure and its purposes is approached differently by different disciplines. Among the most comprehensive of such definitions understands infrastructure as ‘all physical assets, equipment and facilities of interrelated systems and their necessary service providers offering related commodities and services’ to a wide public, with the objective of enabling, supporting or improving people’s living conditions in a given society. This implies that the welfare of individuals is at the core of infrastructure; the main reason that justifies its existence. Recently, sustainability has become part of the concept of infrastructure, leading to the notion of sustainable infrastructure. Sustainable infrastructure, as we use it in this book, is infrastructure ‘planned, designed, constructed, operated and decommissioned in a manner that ensures economic and financial, social, environmental (including climate resilience) and institutional sustainability over the entire life cycle of the project’. Other concepts that refer to specific aspects of sustainable infrastructure, such as natural infrastructure, have emerged, which, while not the main focus of this book, challenge the need to build in order to deliver on infrastructure services and pose the alternative of active management of natural lands and open spaces networks to obtain benefits for human populations and the environment. Typically, infrastructure is classified either as economic or social. Economic infrastructure generally refers to systems that underpin the economy, including in the transport and communications sector, such as roads, airports, ports and railways; in the energy sector, such as windfarms, oil and gas networks or dams; and in water and sanitation, such as water supply and waste disposal. In contrast, social infrastructure is often referred to as those systems on which the well-being of societies depends: in the education sector, such as schools and libraries; in healthcare, such as hospitals and other health facilities. Other infra- structure often classified as social are prisons, the security industry, museums, parks and stadiums and culture and entertainment sector infrastructure. This book analyses the interlinkages and gaps between sustainable public procurement (SPP) of infrastructure and human rights through the case studies of hospitals and infrastructure for mega-sporting events, focused mostly on stadium building. When classifying the latter, however, we are proposing to consider stadiums and other facilities developed in the context of mega-sporting events as a separate classification from social infrastructure. This is because of the specific context in which they are developed, which features artificial deadlines and direct intervention from authorities other than the commissioning public, such as the sporting body of the sport in question, and which involves issues other than public service, such as reputation on the global stage. But in particular, they are different from other social infrastructure projects due to their high developmental impacts and massive public investment, by which countries are bound for decades in order to deliver just a few weeks of activity, as the case studies in Part III demonstrate