Looking down, climbing up:
UNGPs@10 assessment, roadmap presented at 2021 Forum
Voltaire Veneracion, 7 December 2021
Dr. Surya Deva, outgoing Chair (since 1 July 2021) and Member (from India, since 2016) of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights, presented its assessment and roadmap for Responsible Business at the 10th UN Forum on BHR, held from 29 November to 1 December 2021.
With Deva, Dean Anita Ramasastry, former Chair and outgoing Member (from the USA, since 2016), took a bow at the event as BHR stakeholders await the UN’s new six-year appointments to the expert team.
The Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights hosted the annual UN Forum virtually again this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Unlike last year, however, most- but not all- the sessions were live-streamed only on UN Web TV: they were no longer uploaded (as of publication time) on YouTube or other social media.
The session, “Responsible business in the defence sector,” for example, is not available for public viewing on UN Web TV.
2021 marks the 10th anniversary of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. This milestone formed the central theme of the 2021 Forum.
Stakeholders from governments, businesses, and civil society groups looked back at challenges faced and progress made in the field these past ten years.
The Working Group in their stocktaking, meanwhile, called for scaled-up global implementation by States and businesses in the decade ahead.
The 2021 Forum sessions dealt with the world’s confluence of crises, including COVID-19, climate change, inequality, systemic gender and racial discrimination, shrinking civic space, and the impacts on humans of rapid technological developments, like those in artificial intelligence and robotics.
Through many multi-stakeholder consultations, the Working Group had taken stock of the first ten years of the Guiding Principles and developed a roadmap for the next decade (“UNGPs 10+”). The team of experts had already presented the stocktaking report last June 2021 to the Human Rights Council.
The UN Forum provides a global platform for multi-country stakeholders’ conversations on the implementation of the Guiding Principles by States, businesses and other actors.
Watch it on UN Web TV below: