Session organized by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
Session Description:
If one looks at the entire spectrum of sustainable development goals, one can observe that businesses can have both positive and negative impacts on everything ranging from climate change, biodiversity, sustainable production and consumption, the rule of law, and so on. Indeed, all of these sustainable development issues have human rights implications, and they can also be addressed (at least partially) by applying the UNGPs. For example, States should realize that development cannot be unrestrained and must uphold their existing human rights obligations (i.e. respect, protect and fulfil human rights) to ensure sustainable development. Moreover, businesses should respect human rights. While ‘doing no harm’ to human rights is the absolute minimum responsibility of companies under the UNGPs, businesses can of course make huge positive contributions to sustainable development if they choose to do so. It is against this background that the session will focus on how to integrate sustainable development and business and human rights.
Session Objectives:The key objectives of this session are to:
- Explore the challenges in integrating sustainable development (and the SDGs) and business and human rights (and the UNGPs)
- Discuss the respective roles of States and businesses in enabling, and reducing barriers to, integrating the two agendas
- Sharing best practices where implementation of one agenda has progressed the other
- Discuss the impact of COVID-19 on holistic progress on the sustainable development and business and human rights in South Asia
Questions:
Panelists will reflect on the following questions:
- How do the concepts ‘sustainable development’ and ‘business and human rights’ relate to each other? What are challenges in integrating the two?
- What is the role of States in ensuring sustainable development and business respect for human rights?
- What is the role of businesses in respecting human rights and contributing to sustainable development? In addition to respecting human rights, how can businesses also ‘protect’ or ‘fulfil’ human rights? And why can a business’ positive contributions to sustainable development or human rights not offset its negative impacts?
- What issues need to be solved to ensure sustainable development and business respect for human rights going forward?
Background to the discussion:
The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its accompanying Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) outline 17 broad goals to ensure that development is socially and environmentally sustainable. Human rights are essential to achieving the SDGs. A development path in which human rights are not respected and protected cannot be sustainable. This is why the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development underlines that the aim of the SDGs is to “realize the human rights of all”. The United Nations Guiding Principles on Busines and Human Rights (UNGPs) represent the global authoritative standard for what companies need to do to address human rights abuses connected to their business. Considering the linkages between sustainable development and human rights, as well as the significant power held by modern-day corporations, the UNGPs have a tremendous potential to drive positive change for the poorest and most marginalised people in our societies – those that risk being left behind, especially now amidst the socio-economic crisis caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
