Humanity United is launching a blog series featuring the perspectives of some of our partners on the next decade of implementing the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
The intersection of business and human rights is a critical one for those of us working to address forced labor and human trafficking. Of the estimated 24.9 million people worldwide who are in situations of forced labor, approximately 16 million are in the private economy – in every sector, every industry, and every geography, including our own.
2021 marked ten years since the United Nations released the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) to help guide governments, businesses, advocates, workers, survivors of exploitation, and other stakeholders in making human rights a priority of the global economy. You can read our reflections on the 10th anniversary of the UNGPs here.
Late last year, at the United Nations Business and Human Rights Conference, the UN unveiled its roadmap for the next ten years of using the UNGPs to keep pushing human rights to the forefront of the conversation about business and economic policy. The roadmap, titled UNGPs 10+, lays out eight broad action areas and 1-4 specific goals for each. You can see the full document above, and an excellent summary here.
Throughout the years, we’ve had the privilege of working alongside key partners and supporting efforts to ensure that the key themes of the UNGPs are put into action. As our field enters a new decade of work, in the context of a global pandemic, we’ve gathered a collection of perspectives that offer a panoramic view of what the work looks like right now, where we’ve come in the last ten years, and some unique perspectives and lessons learned, which we must apply to our efforts to achieve our goals.
We hope this series is helpful and that these ideas and learnings become a part of the wider conversation around this issue.