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Human Rights, The Social Responsibility and Voluntary Reporting of Multinational Companies

13-15 May 2002

Several hundred human rights instruments have been adopted by international and regional organizations in the last few decades. In a classical sense, the human rights standards include civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights, but labour standards, refugee law, intellectual property rights and humanitarian law form part of the same picture of international regulation. The mainstreaming of human rights is now a catchword in international fora, meaning the integration of the rights across the board of the activities of international organizations. Accordingly, social clauses in trade and commercial arrangements are gaining in influence. The same is true for democracy and good governance guidelines concerning transparency, free media, non-corruption and accountability. Today, the majority of States are formally subscribing to the international human rights instruments and committing themselves too the realization of the corresponding standards at home. International supervision of national compliance is becoming a routine matter, with regional human rights courts, complaints and investigative mechanisms and reporting obligations of States steadily gaining ground. It is clear that companies can impact the respect for all of these standards in terms of both their own activities and their relationships with governments.

The UN-financed Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is an evolving standard on so-called sustainability reporting, which involves the voluntary reporting of company economic, environmental, and social performance, including human rights and labour standards. It is a point of departure for this proposal that it is in the self-interest of businesses to take the human rights standards into account. Good ethics can be good business.

The Global Compact lays down broad principles, but what amounts to "human rights abuses" under the international instruments? What do freedom of association, non-discrimination and forced labour stand for under the international standards? In the Global Reporting Initiative, companies are called upon to report on human rights, but with a few exceptions (human rights of women, indigenous rights, etc) the exact contents have not been spelled out. With the hundreds of instruments and complex monitoring set-ups and options, more detailed knowledge of the respective standards therefore becomes increasingly necessary for companies.

Drawing on the training experience acquired by the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in some 25 countries, the purpose of this program is to offer training for company board members and responsible staff on the available international standards and the monitoring methods and mechanisms. As a result of the training, for performance and reporting purposes, the persons concerned should be better equipped to live up to new expectations as to human rights standards, desirable reporting contents and self-monitoring approaches.

Level: professional

Location: Lund, Sweden

Participants: board members, CEOs and other executives in manufacturing, service, and trading companies along the entire supply chain.

Tuition, fee, lodging: The training course fee for the three days will be SEK 9000.- excl. Swedish VAT (25%) and includes documentation, coffee breaks and lunch every day. If you require any help with travelling/hotel arrangements please see Application Form. Deadline for registration is Friday 26 April 2002.

Contact Information:
Rolf Ring, Assistant Course Director
Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law
Lund
SWEDEN
Tel: +46 46 222 12 08 (direct) or +46 46 222 12 00 (secretary)
Fax: +46 46 222 12 22
E-mail: rolf.ring@rwi.lu.se
Web: http://www.kpmg.se/rwi/