Dante Pesce: Examining business and human rights under the framework of sustainable development

On the morning of March 18, 2021, Professor Dante pesce, Chairman of the Working Group on Business and Human Rights of the United Nations Human Rights Council and Special Adviser on Public Policy of the United Nations Global Compact, gave a special lecture to the teachers and students of the Institute for Human Rights. The theme is "Examining business and human rights under the framework of sustainable development". The lecture was presided by Professor Zhang Wei, co-director of the Institute for Human Rights at China University of Political Science and Law. At the beginning of the lecture, Professor Dante Pesce reflected on the role of enterprises in society over the past few decades, emphasizing the important role played by the UN Guiding Principles in clarifying how to combine respect for human rights with corporate management, and highlighting the state's role in protecting human rights from infringements. The guiding principles point out that the state can promote the sustainable development of enterprises and all economic activities under the control of the state through policies, legislation, supervision, and active communication.

According to Professor Dante Pesce, Human rights due diligence is a core element of the guidelines, which fundamentally prevents human rights violations. Through human rights due diligence investigation and understanding, and earnestly committed to solving the corresponding problems, it can effectively prevent related violations and solve them in a timely manner after the harm occurs. And we can also be pleasantly surprised to find that this series of guiding principles is developing very rapidly and is being accepted by countries around the world and some international organizations, such as European countries, the World Bank, the European Bank, and the United Nations.

Professor Dante Pesce mentioned that, taking Europe as an example, nowadays, EU trade and strategic investment have deliberately incorporated the guiding principles into them since 2000 to realize the values embodied in the principles, and play a role in the sustainable development of trade, human rights protection, fairness and justice to combat corruption in related fields. In December 2019, the representative of Finland proposed the "Agenda for Action on Business and Human Rights" at the Council of Europe meeting. European countries agreed to promote the Finnish representative’s proposal to develop a national action plan on business and human rights for Europe. At this year’s European Commission meeting, countries reached an agreement to encourage companies to voluntarily adopt various methods to achieve human rights protection; on the other hand, they must also consider the guidance of international conventions and recognized principles, such as the "United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights".

Then, Professor Dante Pesce further pointed out that in terms of specific industries, ICMM and the International Association of Mining and Metals have formulated ICMM Performance Expectations, which set corresponding expectations for the sustainable development of enterprises. The third item is respect for human rights. That is, companies are expected to respect the interests, culture, customs and values of employees and related communities affected by their economic activities.

As far as China is concerned, CCCMC (China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Metals, Minerals and Chemicals) cooperates with OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) to formulate investment guidelines for China's overseas operations in the mineral industry. The guide repeatedly mentions the guiding principles on business and human rights. From December 2 to 4, 2020, CCCMC organized the "Supply Chain Sustainable Development Week and 2020 International Forum on Sustainable Mineral Supply Chains", which demonstrated that the Chinese business community is aware of the challenges and risks posed by business and human rights, and is willing to Acting in a transparent and open manner in response to these challenges and risks. This is a commendable progress.

Finally, Professor Dante Pesce summarized the challenges faced by the development of business and human rights, and emphasized that, on the one hand, most countries and regions in the world are faced with the problem of lack of foresight by governments, that is,They cannot realize the importance of respecting human rights, protecting the environment, and improving corporate governance for the development of enterprises. On the other hand, when formulating policies, these governments often put sustainable development, business and human rights on different policy tracks, while ignoring the relationship between them. This is also one of the main problems.

In the questioning session, Professor Tang Yingxia from Nankai University communicated with Professor Dante Pesce on how companies can identify human rights risks in a comprehensive and detailed manner; and most corporate evaluations are conducted by governments or non-governmental organizations, so how to ensure the neutrality of investigations. Professor Dante Pesce replied that many companies have practical experience in assessing risks. We can further expand the practical ways of assessing risks and enrich practical experience. For example, you can listen to the opinions of multiple stakeholders such as suppliers, customers, business partners, and regulators. As far as neutrality is concerned, firstly, the corresponding evaluation standards are becoming uniform; secondly, companies themselves often hope that institutions can provide honest and objective evaluations. Of course, absolute neutrality can never be guaranteed, and personal growth experience will more or less form some prejudices about certain issues, which is also inevitable to some extent.

The lecture ended successfully with the warm applause of the students!

Written by WU Siru