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Tuesday, November 26
 

9:00am CET

BHR informal dialogues: Development Finance Institutions
Tuesday November 26, 2024 9:00am - 9:40am CET
The newly introduced BHR Informal Dialogues will offer an open, dynamic platform for inclusive and in-depth discussions on critical issues within the Business and Human Rights (BHR) agenda. These sessions are structured to encourage autonomous, participant-led conversations without formal speakers or panelists, fostering a free-flowing exchange of diverse ideas and perspectives. The aim is to create a collaborative space where all participants can directly engage with one another, enabling meaningful dialogue that promotes deeper understanding of key issues.

By encouraging active participation from all participants, the BHR Informal Dialogues seek to ensure that a broad range of voices contribute to shaping the future of business and human rights practices. This format prioritizes diversity of views and backgrounds, creating a space where different stakeholders can share insights, experiences, and best practices in a flexible and open environment.

This informal and interactive space is open to everyone and is designed to spark collaborative thinking, drive solution-oriented discussions, and contribute to advancing the global BHR agenda.

Each Interactive dialogue will be facilitated by one or two people to ensure effective and inclusive dialogue. The facilitators will guide the discussion, assist in maintaining a balanced conversation, and ensure that all voices are heard. This structure will help both facilitators and participants to ensure a free-flowing exchange of diverse ideas and perspectives. There will be no interpretation provided.

Topics for Discussion: The BHR Informal Dialogues will focus on a range of pressing topics, including:
  • Development Finance Institutions (DFIs): Assessing the role of DFIs in promoting business practices that respect human rights.

Objectives
- Raise awareness about DFIs’ responsibility in protecting human rights and ensuring public participation.
- Discuss and identify potential measures on how DFIs should strengthen their safeguards and accountability.

Guiding questions:
- What specific strategies can DFIs adopt to promote a safe civic space and ensure meaningful public participation in development projects, while promoting human rights in their business practices?
- How can development finance institutions strengthen their accountability mechanisms to ensure effective access to remedy for communities affected by their investments?

Speakers
avatar for Anabella Sibrian

Anabella Sibrian

Defensora de derechos humanos, Protection International Mesoamérica
Defensora de derechos humanos guatemalteca, con más de 20 años de experiencia trabajando en ese ámbito en organizaciones internacionales. Ha venido participando en los foros de las Naciones Unidas sobre las empresas y los derechos humanos desde 2012 acompañando personas defensoras... Read More →
avatar for Nina Lesikhina

Nina Lesikhina

Policy Officer, CEE Bankwatch Network
Nina Lesikhina is a Policy Officer at CEE Bankwatch Network and a human rights defender with 25 years of experience in the civil society sector. She has led public advocacy campaigns focused on community engagement, energy, climate change, and resource management worldwide.
Tuesday November 26, 2024 9:00am - 9:40am CET
Room XIX

10:00am CET

Do National Action Plans on Business and Human Rights Work in the Asia-Pacific?
Tuesday November 26, 2024 10:00am - 11:20am CET
Session co-organized by the Working Group on Business and Human Rights with OHCHR SEARO, with support from UNDP 

Brief description of the session: 
After a decade of implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), national action plans on business and human rights (NAPs) have increasingly become a mainstay in efforts to promote business and human rights (BHR) in the Asia-Pacific region. Thus far, nine countries have adopted a NAP or similar document. But as civic spaces continue to recede in this region, are these NAPs truly enough to help ensure that business-related human rights abuses are being systematically addressed and prevented? How can NAPs be implemented in ‘hard’ places to ensure that ‘rights-washing’ – whereupon NAPs simply become a box-ticking exercise for States and businesses – does not happen? Will real implementation only happen once mandatory Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD) measures are put in place? And how can the third pillar of the UNGPs – access to remedy – be better integrated into the design and execution of these plans?

This session brings together experts and practitioners of BHR to assess the effectiveness of NAPs in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as discuss the progress made and challenges that remain in terms of their implementation. Further, speakers will reflect on positive practices that should guide how NAPs are developed, implemented, and enforced. The session will be conducted in a ‘fireside chat’ format, such that speakers are asked to provide frank responses to a series of trigger questions and interactive engagement with the audience will be prioritized.

Key questions: 
  • To what extent are the NAPs that have been developed or which are developing in the region aligned with the UNGPs and other key international instruments such as the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct and the ILO’s MNE Declaration and International Labour Standards?
  • How can genuine multi-stakeholder dialogue and participation, including of stakeholders at the grassroots level, be effectively ensured in NAP development and implementation processes?
  • When should NAPs be updated and revised? Are there good practices or lessons learned that can be drawn upon in the revision of the NAPs?
  • How can ‘rights-washing’ be prevented in the development and implementation of NAPs in the Asia-Pacific region?
  • How can we know if a NAP has succeeded or failed?

Additional background documents:
 
Moderators
avatar for Pichamon Yeophantong

Pichamon Yeophantong

Member, UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights
Ms. Pichamon Yeophantong is Associate Professor and Head of Research at the Centre for Future Defence and National Security, Deakin University. She also leads the Responsible Business Lab and the Environmental Justice and Human Rights Project, which are funded by an Australian Research... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Iqbal Ahmed Detho

Iqbal Ahmed Detho

Chairperson, Sindh Human Rights Commission - Pakistan
Iqbal Ahmed Detho is currently Chairperson Sindh Human Rights Commission since March 2023 and former Member from Sindh for National Commission on the Rights of Child 2020-23. He has been Human/Child Rights Trainer and Educator since last 15 years. He is also member of various Provincial... Read More →
avatar for Shin Young Chung

Shin Young Chung

Attorney at Law, Advocates for Public Interest Law/ Korea Transnational Corporations Watch
Shin Young Chung is a public interest lawyer at Advocates for Public Interest Law, a non-profit organization of lawyers who assist vulnerable migrants. Shin Young is also a member of Korea Transnational Corporations Watch (KTNC Watch), a coalition of labor, environmental, human rights... Read More →
Tuesday November 26, 2024 10:00am - 11:20am CET
Room XIX

11:40am CET

‘Smart Mix of Measures’ and Implications of European Legislative Developments in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia
Tuesday November 26, 2024 11:40am - 1:00pm CET
Session co-organized by the Working Group on Business and Human Rights, the Polish Institute for Human Rights and Business (PL), Y. Mudryi National Law University (UA), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)  
 
Interpretation provided in EnglishChinese and Russian. 

Brief description of the session:

Central and Eastern European and Central Asian countries are increasingly taking action to address the adverse impacts of business activities on people and the environment. This trend is being amplified by their varying levels of integration with the European Union—whether as EU member states, countries aspiring for accession, or due to close economicpolitical and other ties. With the adoption of EU regulations, particularly the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD)the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), due diligence requirements in the EU AI Act and CoE Framework Convention on AI and Human Rightsas well as national human rights due diligence requirements in countries like France and Germany, Central and Eastern European and Central Asian countries are facing new expectations. 

This session will explore the practical implications of these recent European legal developments on how business is done in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, from the perspectives of multiple stakeholders. It will focus on how governments are adapting their domestic legal frameworks to align with the new legally binding standards, and how businesses are preparing to meet these new obligations, particularly regarding enhanced human rights due diligence, how AI could be used in human rights due diligence. Furthermore, the session will examine how rights holders in the region can leverage these regulatory developments to ensure their rights are respected and to access effective remedies. 

Key objectives of the session: 
  •  Exchange insights on the challenges faced by businesses and governments in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia as they work to meet the new European regulatory requirements, share methodologies for implementation, emerging practices and common mistakes.  
  •  Discuss how rights holders, including workers, worker organizations, and civil society groups, can use these regulatory changes to promote better models at national level, demand accountability and access remedies for human rights abuses within the region. 
Moderators
avatar for Lyra Jakuleviciene

Lyra Jakuleviciene

Vice-chairperson, UN Working Group on business and human rights
Ms. Lyra Jakulevičienė is an international legal scholar specialising in international and European Union law, human rights law in particular, for more than two decades. She is a Professor and the Dean of the Law School of Mykolas Romeris University in Lithuania. She has extensive... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Alise Artamonova

Alise Artamonova

Associate, COBALT Legal
Alise is a business and human rights (BHR) lawyer from Latvia practicing in the ESG practice group of COBALT Legal – a pan-Baltic law firm. She is advising businesses and investors on integrating human rights and environmental considerations into their policies, contracts and processes... Read More →
avatar for Zsofia Kerecsen

Zsofia Kerecsen

Team Leader Corporate Governance Policy, DG JUST, European Commission
avatar for Nina Tevdorashvili

Nina Tevdorashvili

ESG Manager, Akhalkalaki Hydroelectric Power Plant
My name is Nino (Nina) Tevdorashvili, and I am a sustainability and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) expert with over 19 years of experience across the energy, oil, gas, social, environmental, governance, and banking sectors. My work spans environmental assessments, stakeholder... Read More →
avatar for Marija Andelkovic

Marija Andelkovic

Astra
Marija Anđelkovic is director and one of the founders of NGO ASTRA-Anti trafficking action, the first grass root NGO combating trafficking in human beings. She is a lawyer by profession with 25 years of experience in field of anti-trafficking and one of the first civil society activists... Read More →
avatar for Dr. Hab Ewa Flaszynska

Dr. Hab Ewa Flaszynska

Ministry of Labour of Poland
Tuesday November 26, 2024 11:40am - 1:00pm CET
Room XIX

1:20pm CET

Networking hubs: Academia
Tuesday November 26, 2024 1:20pm - 2:40pm CET
The Networking Hubs will provide an open platform designed to facilitate exchanges among diverse groups of stakeholders on the Business and Human Rights (BHR) agenda. These spaces are structured to encourage autonomous, participant-led conversations without formal speakers or panelists, fostering a free-flowing exchange of experiences and perspectives. The aim is to create a collaborative peer learning space within stakeholders, where each stakeholder group can directly engage with one another, fostering meaningful dialogue. 

The format of these spaces leverages the networking essence of the Forum, offering a flexible and open environment for different stakeholder groups to share best practices, challenges, and innovative proposals.  

Stakeholder groupsThe Networking Hubs will focus on a range of pressing topics, including: 
  • Academia: Sharing research insights and theoretical perspectives on BHR developments.  

No interpretation will be provided. 


Tuesday November 26, 2024 1:20pm - 2:40pm CET
Room XIX

3:00pm CET

Land Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the context of large-scale land acquisition
Tuesday November 26, 2024 3:00pm - 4:20pm CET
Session co-organized by the Working Group on Business and Human Rights and the Indigenous Caucus 

Interpretation provided in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese.

Brief description of the session: 

Globally, there is rapid increase in the demand for land and its resources. Businesses, including investors, are pursuing large-scale land acquisition for economic projects related to food, fuel, minerals, renewable energy, and conservation and more. However, transparency and participation are often lacking in these acquisition processes, enabled by poor or inexistent accountability mechanisms and legal frameworks to protect the rights holders, in particular Indigenous Peoples.
Indigenous Peoples make up more than 6% of the world’s population and hold an estimated 20% of the Earth’s land mass - one-half to one-third of the collectively-held land globally. However, they have formal legal ownership of less than 10% of this land. As a result, their lands are constantly under threat of unfair and forced acquisition for business investments, often leading to serious abuses of Indigenous Peoples ' rights and those of their defenders.
This session will engage relevant stakeholders in discussing how land acquisitions have been or should be integrated into businesses human rights due diligence processes across their value chains. It will also explore the types of smart mix of measures that may help governments protect Indigenous Peoples’ rights in the context of land acquisition, in particular with regard to the requirement to obtain a Free, Prior and Informed Consent from the concerned Indigenous Peoples.

Key objectives of the session:
  • To contextualize the growing trend of large-scale land acquisition for business activities, and their impacts on Indigenous Peoples' rights.
  • To examine  practices and lessons learned regarding  different measures adopted by governments to protect the rights of Indigenous Peoples in the context of large-scale land acquisition.
  • To discuss  what kinds of a smart mix of measures could support the Free, Prior and Informed Consent from Indigenous Peoples with regard to land acquisition.
  • To discuss emerging practices from businesses, including investors,  to prevent, mitigate and account for adverse impacts of  land acquisitions on Indigenous Peoples rights, including the right of participation and FPIC.
Moderators
avatar for Pichamon Yeophantong

Pichamon Yeophantong

Member, UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights
Ms. Pichamon Yeophantong is Associate Professor and Head of Research at the Centre for Future Defence and National Security, Deakin University. She also leads the Responsible Business Lab and the Environmental Justice and Human Rights Project, which are funded by an Australian Research... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Tulia Machado-Helland

Tulia Machado-Helland

Head of Human Rights, Storebrand Asset Management
Tulia Machado-Helland is the Head of Human Rights at the Sustainable Investment team at Storebrand Asset Management. Her main responsibilities are to develop policies and procedures to integrate human rights in investment decisions; to conduct human right due diligence of portfolios... Read More →
avatar for Antonina Gorbunova

Antonina Gorbunova

Member, Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Antonina Gorbunova is an indigenous Nenets lawyer and leader, born in the Kanin Peninsula in Russia’s High North. She practices law for ten years, including eight years of work on the rights of indigenous peoples. Her human rights career evolved from assistant to an indigenous Member... Read More →
avatar for Ebo Mili

Ebo Mili

Siang Indigenous Farmers Forum
avatar for Edward Porokwa

Edward Porokwa

Executive director, Pastoralists Indigenous NGO (PINGO) Forum
avatar for Paula Andrea Villa Vélez

Paula Andrea Villa Vélez

Directora Jurídica, Unidad Administrativa Especial de Gestión de Restitución de Tierras Despojadas del
Tuesday November 26, 2024 3:00pm - 4:20pm CET
Room XIX

4:40pm CET

Towards more effective corporate accountability in Latin America: prevention, remediation and participation in the design of measures
Tuesday November 26, 2024 4:40pm - 6:00pm CET
Session co-organized by the Business and Human Rights Working Group, International Federation for Human Rights.
 
Brief description of the session:
This session seeks to analyze normative, regulatory, public policy and institutional trends in business and human rights in Latin America, to delve into challenges and opportunities to achieve greater effectiveness in the implementation of existing and developing frameworks, as well as to achieve greater access to justice when abuses occur. Given the particularities of the region, the panel will reflect on how due diligence becomes an effective tool for prevention, how to move towards more effective corporate accountability in Latin America, and how substantive participation can be guaranteed, with the voice of those in most vulnerable situations at the center, including an intersectional perspective with an ethnic and gender focus. Likewise, the panel will seek to explore lessons learnt from strategies focused on value chains and from multi-stakeholder initiatives that promote public-private cooperation. Finally, it will seek to reflect on some specific regulatory challenges that arise in Latin America, which has become a strategic region for the just transition, as a supplier of critical minerals and also given its wealth of biodiversity and the need to promote conservation and combat deforestation more effectively.

Key objectives of the session:
This session will seek to analyze normative, regulatory, public policy and institutional trends in business and human rights in Latin America, and their implementation, in order to improve respect for human rights in the context of business activities, achieve greater corporate accountability and advance access to effective and comprehensive remedy, considering the specificities of the regional context, and the approach from the value chains, putting people at the center.

Context of the discussion:
Latin America has made significant progress in the area of business and human rights, materialized in the use of the UNGPs as a common platform for action and a minimum standard for different actors, including governments, companies and investors, civil society, national human rights institutions, among others. However, challenges in the region persist, facing long-standing structural problems that, in some cases, are exacerbated by socio-environmental conflicts that occur within the framework of the activities of national and transnational companies operating in Latin America.
The efforts of States in the region to prevent and mitigate the impacts of the business sector and, eventually, remedy them, have been focused on National Action Plans on Business and Human Rights, and/or on the growing search to develop specific sectoral policies that regulate the economy. Likewise, civil society organizations, as well as some national governments, have begun to promote processes for the elaboration of laws on corporate responsibility to respect human rights and the environment, such as Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Chile. In addition, and considering the globalization of supply chains and the transnational nature of a large part of business operations and impacts, regulatory advances in other regions such as the European Union, and countries such as France, Norway, Germany, among others, are also a key part of the discussions in Latin America.
These regulatory advances take on a particular dimension given the characteristics of the Latin American region, where many countries are major exporters of raw materials and recipients (and competitors) of investments. The persistent negative impacts require the identification of gaps at the regulatory and public policy level, but also the improvement of existing ones, as well as their effective implementation through greater supervision, oversight and technical and budgetary resources, that is, strong public institutions. No less important is improving access to justice, eliminating or minimizing obstacles to comprehensive and effective reparation.
The regulatory and institutional ecosystem that influences and regulates business activities is extremely broad and is made up of constitutional norms, laws and regulations, as well as specific regulatory frameworks such as mining codes and just transition policies, extending to public tendering and contracting regimes, and environmental impact assessment procedures, among others. In order to advance in the respect for human rights in the context of business activities, an smart mix of measures and policy coherence is needed that aims to increase accountability, guarantee greater legal responsibility and better access to remedy.
With this ecosystem as a reference, this session will seek to analyze some normative, regulatory and institutional trends at a regional level and delve into challenges and opportunities to achieve greater effectiveness in the implementation of existing and developing frameworks, as well as greater justice when violations occur, which considers rights holders at the center. Due diligence permeates the discussions on the business and human rights agenda, so this panel seeks to analyze how this foundation of Pillar II of the UNGPs constitutes an effective instrument of prevention, allowing progress towards greater corporate accountability in Latin America, incorporating the specificities of the Latin American legal system, as well as the particularities of the region, and adding the perspective of potentially affected people at the center, guaranteeing effective participation, and the intersectional perspective with an ethnic and gender focus.
The session will reflect on initiatives developed throughout the value chain and the work of multi-stakeholder alliances that allow us to think of creative solutions that have a positive impact on society as a whole, especially on most vulnerable populations. Building innovative solutions challenges us to work together with stakeholders throughout the entire value chain, to achieve mechanisms that contribute to the measurement of impacts (cumulative and synergistic), traceability, social well-being, respect for human rights and care for the environment. Hence the importance of having concrete experiences developed through the value chains of different sectors, based on dialogue and cooperation of stakeholders, at the public and private level.
Finally, the panel will seek to delve into some specific regulatory challenges that arise in new contexts that Latin America is going through, such as that of the just transition. This includes REDD+ projects, whose regulation, in many countries in the region, is insufficient to guarantee the protection of human rights and, in particular, those of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. These new instruments, which arise as a response to the efforts of States to advance strategies to reduce and mitigate greenhouse gases, entail new challenges and tensions at the regulatory and implementation level. Including these particularities in the debate is extremely relevant in Latin America, a region that suffers from high levels of deforestation and that is home to large areas of jungle and forests such as the Amazon and the Gran Chaco, which transcend the border limits of the countries.

Moderators
avatar for Fernanda Hopenhaym

Fernanda Hopenhaym

Chairperson, UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights
Ms. Fernanda Hopenhaym is Co-Executive Director at Project on Organizing, Development, Education and Research (PODER), an organization in Latin America dedicated to corporate accountability. For twenty years, Ms. Hopenhaym has worked on economic, social and gender justice. Since 2006... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Carolina Mejia Micolta

Carolina Mejia Micolta

Abogada, Cámara de Comercio de Bogotá
Carolina tiene experiencia en áreas jurídicas de diferentes compañías, en temas de Derecho Comercial y Corporativo. En los últimos cuatro años ha trabajado en organizaciones empresariales como la Asociación Nacional de Empresarios de Colombia y actualmente en la Cámara de... Read More →
avatar for Gabriela Quijano

Gabriela Quijano

Especialista/Asesora Independiente sobre Empresas y Derechos Humanos, Especialista/Asesora Independiente sobre Empresas y Derechos Humanos
Gabriela Quijano es especialista y asesora independiente en derechos humanos y empresas. Trabaja con organizaciones y redes de la sociedad civil en el análisis y elaboración de normas y propuestas legislativas, investigación de casos, litigio estratégico, y desarrollo de estrategias... Read More →
avatar for Walter Quertehuari

Walter Quertehuari

Presidente, ECA Amarakaeri
avatar for Edmilson Santos dos Santos

Edmilson Santos dos Santos

Ministérios dos Direitos Humanos e da Cidadania
He is a professor at the Federal University of the São Francisco Valley (Univasf). Between 2015 and 2016, he held the position of Coordinator of Ethnic-Racial Relations at the Ministry of Education. Until October 2024, he held the position of Advisor in the Special Office for the... Read More →
Tuesday November 26, 2024 4:40pm - 6:00pm CET
Room XIX
 
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