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.
