Human Rights and Business Country Portal Receives SIDA Funding

... resource for companies to comprehensively identify and manage the human rights impacts of their operations around the world, will be funded through 2016. The Portal will launch in December 2013.

The Human Rights and Business Country Portal is a free website for companies to identify, assess and address their human rights impacts around the world. The Country Portal provides country- and sector-specific information about the human rights impacts of businesses, alongside concrete recommendations for preventing and mitigating adverse impacts, as well as maximising positive ones.

The Country Portal emphasizes multi-stakeholder engagement and dialogue, and seeks to build the capacity of local Portal partners on human rights and business. All country information is gathered and validated through partnerships with local actors. Human rights due diligence recommendations are developed through multi-stakeholder engagement between businesses, government and civil society and cover a range of topics including vulnerable groups, child labour, environment, revenue transparency, working conditions and security.

40 countries covered
SIDA has agreed to fund the launch and first three years of the Country Portal rollout. The Country Portal will launch at the UN Annual Forum on Business and Human Rights in Geneva in December 2013, and will cover 40 countries around the world by 2016. The Portal is also supported by Barrick Gold Corp. and Rio Tinto.

Director of DIHR’s human rights and business department, Allan Lerberg Jørgensen said:

"Understanding the local context in which you do business is the single most important starting point for companies to get human rights right. The key aim of the Human Rights and Business Country Portal is to provide this information for free and in a language that companies can relate to. We are delighted that the support from SIDA now allows us to do this on a large scale."

Taking up responsibilities
In line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the Country Portal covers the full spectrum of human rights and aims to engage businesses of all sizes and sectors in taking up the corporate responsibility to respect human rights.

Yet the Country Portal is more than a tool for companies.

"International principles on human rights and business have been developing rapidly over the recent years and the respective roles of government and business have been clarified. We hope that the Human Rights and Business Country Portal will help all actors operationalize these principles in a national context,"Lerberg Jørgensenadded.

"The Portal provides information that can be used by all stakeholders—businesses, civil society, government, labour and communities—to dialogue on how business negatively affects human rights and possible solutions," said Mutuso Dhliwayo, director of the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA), the Country Portal partner in Zimbabwe.

Leer en español aqui.