Roadmap for India’s Adoption and Implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights

 

 

At the Closing Plenary of the 2nd South Asia Forum on Business and Human Rights, I had the honour of speaking as a country rapporteur for India. I shared my perspective on India’s roadmap for adopting the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). I must add that there was much resonance between what I shared and what country rapporteurs from Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka did. The Forum, as well as the closing plenary, highlighted the potential opportunity for greater regional collaboration across businesses, government, civil society, and communities on advancing the business and human rights agenda.

 

For the World Benchmarking Alliance, which is a multi-stakeholder alliance, our work and vision have always centered around the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The UNGPs is an important cornerstone for achieving the SDGs.

 

The next decade, both for India and the world, should be a decade of disclosure and a transparency revolution to accelerate the contribution of the private sector for achieving the SDGs.

 

India’s implementation of the UNGPs should begin with the publication of a thorough national baseline assessment together with a National Action Plan (NAP). India’s NAP should articulate actions, outcomes and timelines with clearly defined roles and responsibilities.

 

There is a lack of understanding and capacity on issues of human rights and business accountability in the national and state governments beyond the few ministries involved in the NAP development processes, judiciary and the police. Awareness and capacity building of key personnel at the Union, State, District, and frontline levels on the UNGPs should start immediately.

 

Standard Operating Procedures should be developed for government departments, companies, industry association, etc. for the adoption of NAP to ensure that every stakeholder has the same understanding of responsibilities and processes.

 

Multi-stakeholder pilots should be developed to facilitate co-learning and co-designing of implementation mechanisms in different regions and sectors. Based on the learning from these pilots, implementation mechanisms can be scaled up for all regions and all sectors.

 

The government has an opportunity to lead by example on adopting the UNGPs. The government should commit to a target of 100% UNGPs compliant procurement by 2022. The sheer volume of government procurement across state-owned enterprises, railways, food grains, etc. have massive leverage to move the markets towards UNGPs adoption.

 

India, like many other emerging economies, faces constraints of state and fiscal capacity that poses a major impediment to effective policy implementation. The government can take measures to create additional state and non-state capacity for implementation of the NAP by working together with the private sector and civil society.

 

India should consider the period from 2023 – 2027 as a period for full-scale implementation of the NAP, its review and scaling up of pilots.

 

Efforts should be made to institutionalise implementation mechanisms at the State and District levels with adequate capacity, funding and in collaboration with stakeholders from civil society and industry.

 

UNGP pillar three - access to remedy relies on access to effective and timely judicial or non-judicial remedy. India’s overburdened judicial system poses a significant challenge in the implementation of the NAP. Increased awareness and capacity on the UNGPs are likely to have increased demand on the local judicial system. It is important to institutionalise local level non-judicial remedy mechanisms as a compact between community, workers, civil society, industry, and local administration.

 

Adopting an independent and nationwide accountability mechanism to assess and monitor the progress of Indian businesses on UNGPs will accelerate India’s NAP implementation. Businesses must embrace benchmarks and learn from them.

 

An inclusive and consultative review process of the NAP must be designed to occur at an interval of every two years. Based on learning and evidence emerging from the review process, the NAP and its implementation mechanisms must be corrected and re-designed if necessary.

 

Capital markets and financial institutions need to be transformed to support and promote the UNGPs, the SDGs and the Paris Agreement. Financial institutions in India must prioritise lending to or investing in businesses with a proven track record of supporting and respecting global goals. Necessary incentive mechanisms must be put in place to shift capital allocation towards sustainable and responsible businesses.

 

The success of India’s NAP relies heavily on the significantly large micro-small and medium enterprise (MSME) sector and how well they adopt the UNGPs. The MSME sector is often organised in geographic and sector-based clusters. To begin with, 100 MSME clusters should be identified for a thorough implementation of the NAP. By identifying export clusters connected to global value chains in OECD or the EU countries could potentially help position India as a destination for sustainable manufacturing and sourcing. 

 

By 2030, I believe that India and the world will be able to successfully deliver on the SDG targets, with the private sector playing a key role. Achieving economic growth and protecting human rights will no longer be considered a zero-sum-game. Voices of dissent and those against injustice, discrimination and human rights violations will become integral to the country’s progress and sustainability.

 

Here's a Youtube video of the session recording. You can find me speaking from 11 mins onwards in the video:

Originally published on Linkedin