Human Level

The International Labour Organization (ILO) published the fourth edition of its Global Estimates on International Migrant Workers (December 2024). The report provides estimates of the international migrant labour force through 2022, including employed and unemployed migrants, disaggregated by age, sex, country income group and region. See our key takeaways below: ⬇️ ❗ The ILO’s latest data shows that global labour migration is steadily rising. In 2022, the global labour force saw 167.7 million international migrants, making up 4.7% of the total workforce — an increase of 30 million since 2013. While the COVID-19 pandemic slowed migration, the overall number of employed migrants continues to rise, particularly in sectors like care —in part the result of an aging population in high-income destination countries. Most work in services (68.4%), followed by industry (24.3%) and agriculture (7.4%). 🔍 Migrant women face additional barriers in the workforce, the result of structural barriers, socio-cultural factors and discriminatory practices in both host and home country labour markets. Women tend to have more limited access to jobs and greater unpaid care responsibilities. 📣 What are the implications of these trends for the private sector? For one, companies may find higher human rights risks to workers in their operations and value chains, driven by the heightened vulnerability of migrant workers compared to non-migrant workers, especially in ‘blue collar’ roles. Migrant women face even higher risks of labour exploitation. 💡 In addition, companies may need to account for the fact that migrant workers tend to have less access to social services in their host countries, making it more difficult for them to earn a living wage, access healthcare and achieve an adequate standard of living. This is especially the case for workers in sectors with high rates of informality, like construction. Conducting human rights due diligence with an eye to the higher risks facing migrant workers — including in the value chain — can help companies to better prevent and mitigate these risks. Read our full summary here: https://lnkd.in/euTUBWB4

The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) launched its Assessment Report on the Interlinkages Among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health – known as the Nexus Report (December 2024). The report identifies interconnections between these four ecosystem services and the effects of climate change. By improving understanding of these interconnections, the assessment aims to foster more synergistic and effective management across sectors and scales. See our key takeaways below: ⬇️ 📣 As a global population, we are at a make-or-break moment in history. We are quickly changing the environment around us, leading to interconnected crises of biodiversity loss, water scarcity, food insecurity, impacts to health and climate change. Making forward, progress means we need to recognise the complexity of the systems around us — a change in one area could mean a multitude of cascading changes elsewhere. And delayed action increases the challenges and our resilience to address them, with the cost of addressing biodiversity loss potentially doubling over time. 💡 IPBES believes that achieving positive outcomes across biodiversity, water, food, health, and climate is possible through integrated approaches focused on ecosystem conservation, sustainable resource use and climate mitigation, while ensuring equity and human rights, and addressing the needs of vulnerable populations. 🤝 Economic and policy decisions that prioritise short-term gains over long-term sustainability exacerbate inequalities. By contrast, the most impactful approaches are those that involve transformative changes to our economic model: changing business models from extractive to regenerative; aligning incentives for nature protection through policy and market levers; and respecting human rights and ensuring equity of our shared resources. Companies and investors need to proactively push for these transformations if we’re going to make it to the other side of our global crisis point. Read our full summary here: https://lnkd.in/eDzajBUy

The Stockholm Resilience Centre (Stockholm University) and the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences) published its report on Doing Business Within Planetary Boundaries (November 2024). The report outlines the key role that businesses and investors can play in addressing the climate and nature crisis, and calls for a shift in practices to measure corporate activities based on what really matters for the health of the planet. See our key takeaways below: ⬇️ 🌍 The science is clear: human and economic activities are destabilising the very climate and living ecosystems that we rely on for goods and services and, therefore, for our survival. We have already crossed 6 of the 9 planetary boundaries necessary for maintaining stable and resilient biological life-support systems on earth. The stakes are high—not just for people and planet but also for businesses, as climate change, biodiversity loss, and water crises threaten to render vast areas uninhabitable and make business costly or impossible. However, many companies focus primarily on global greenhouse gas emissions in their performance measures, often overlooking local environmental impacts. This gives a false sense of progress and underestimates the risks posed by ecosystem degradation. Current risk assessments for nature and climate fail to account for the cumulative and aggregate effects of environmental harm. This means companies are vulnerable not only to the impacts of their own activities but also to those caused by other sectors and actors. ❗ Additionally, when companies disclose only the environmental impacts they believe are financially material, they risk ignoring impacts that contribute to cumulative environmental harm that could lead to larger systemic risks—such as the large-scale loss of essential ecosystem services. ❓ So what can companies do? Companies should expand their impact assessments beyond just greenhouse gas emissions to include a broader range of environmental factors, using frameworks like the Planetary Boundaries. By applying environmental science, companies can prioritise disclosures that account for the cumulative effects of their activities. The report recommends two key tools that companies can use: the Essential Environmental Impact Variables (EEIV) and the Earth System Impact Score (ESI score). The first is a science-based and sector-specific framework to help prioritise and collect data on the environmental impact of corporate activities for each sector. The second is a systemic, science-based and context-sensitive tool that helps companies assess the global environmental impact of their local activities, identify key areas for improving environmental performance and account for the cumulative and aggregate effects of its activities. Read our full summary here: https://lnkd.in/erVSx-7n

The Institute for Human Rights and Business released its annual list of top business and human rights issues, which forecasts the priority challenges and opportunities for responsible business in 2025. The list also includes key actions for companies to take. See our key takeaways below: ⬇️ 🌍 2024 has had its share of highs and low for people and planet, and the crystal ball tells us that 2025 is likely to continue to bring transformative change in society, business, investment, global governance and beyond. 💡 IHRB’s top ten list of business and human rights issues for 2025 spans a wide range of trends: 1) Respect for human rights in the race to renewables; 2) Untying finance and conflict; 3) Mapping and addressing AI risks; 4) Strengthening human rights and environmental protections in shipping; 5) The role for business in conflict recovery; 6) Operating with respect for human rights in a conflict context; 7) Mandatory human rights due diligence legislation; 8) Ensuring safe migration and rights of migrant workers; 9) The power of diversity, equity and inclusion; and 10) Restoring climate confidence 🤝 Companies play a pivotal role in each of these areas, but they don’t need to act alone. Ensuring human rights due diligence, meaningful stakeholder engagement and access to remedy across business value chains will help companies take the steps to prepare for these trends internally and with business partners. At the same time, advocating and partnering with governments, trade unions and civil society for strong regulatory approaches to issues like workers’ rights, FPIC, climate change and beyond can help move mountains. 🔮 Our prediction for 2025? A significantly larger number of companies and their partners will embrace the transformation needed to address these challenges. They will see a role for themselves in helping shape the world that we want to live in, they will embrace innovation and forward thinking on human rights and the environment, and they will face the challenges head on, leaning into difficult topics instead of drawing back. Read our full summary here: https://lnkd.in/gqagDgYB

The Institute for Human Rights and Business released its annual list of top business and human rights issues, which forecasts the priority challenges and opportunities for responsible business in 2025. The list also includes key actions for companies to take. See our key takeaways below: ⬇️ 🌍 2024 has had its share of highs and low for people and planet, and the crystal ball tells us that 2025 is likely to continue to bring transformative change in society, business, investment, global governance and beyond. 💡 IHRB’s top ten list of business and human rights issues for 2025 spans a wide range of trends: 1) Respect for human rights in the race to renewables; 2) Untying finance and conflict; 3) Mapping and addressing AI risks; 4) Strengthening human rights and environmental protections in shipping; 5) The role for business in conflict recovery; 6) Operating with respect for human rights in a conflict context; 7) Mandatory human rights due diligence legislation; 8) Ensuring safe migration and rights of migrant workers; 9) The power of diversity, equity and inclusion; and 10) Restoring climate confidence. 🤝 Companies play a pivotal role in each of these areas, but they don’t need to act alone. Ensuring human rights due diligence, meaningful stakeholder engagement and access to remedy across business value chains will help companies take the steps to prepare for these trends internally and with business partners. At the same time, advocating and partnering with governments, trade unions and civil society for strong regulatory approaches to issues like workers’ rights, FPIC, climate change and beyond can help move mountains. 🔮 Our prediction for 2025? A significantly larger number of companies and their partners will embrace the transformation needed to address these challenges. They will see a role for themselves in helping shape the world that we want to live in, they will embrace innovation and forward thinking on human rights and the environment, and they will face the challenges head on, leaning into difficult topics instead of drawing back. Read our full summary here: https://lnkd.in/gqagDgYB

Rights CoLab, together with pro bono divisions of participating law firms under TrustLaw, the global pro bono legal network of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, published their new report which looks at socio-economic inequality-related reporting requirements across 10 Global South and Global North countries: Brazil, China, Mexico, Germany, the United States, South Africa, the UK, Singapore, India and Hong Kong. See our key takeaways below: ⬇️ 🔍 Growing socioeconomic inequality within countries poses risks not only to vulnerable populations but also to global stability, financial markets and the operating context for business. Regulators and investors need better tools to assess inequality-related risks in corporate value chains. 💡 A report reviewing 10 countries across the Global North and Global South found that there is rising regulatory interest in inequality disclosures. Both mandatory and voluntary frameworks are looking at issues like horizontal inequality (disparities across groups like gender, race, disability, Indigenous peoples, LGTBQ+ individuals, etc.) through disclosure on topics like workforce and leadership representation. Vertical inequality (income/wealth disparity) is mostly addressed through voluntary pay equity disclosures. 📣 Other topics, like inequality in supply chains, tax-related disclosures and the informal economy, are key — but requirements are not always consistent across the board, if they even exist. In particular, the informal economy, a major inequality factor, is largely overlooked in laws, highlighting a gap for future regulation. 💼 While progress is being made, there’s still a lot of room to standardise and strengthen inequality-related disclosures. This is an important signal for companies that there may be increased scrutiny of these topics as regulators begin to leverage disclosure requirements to tackle human rights issues, including through comprehensive approaches like the EU CSDDD. Taking initial steps to identify inequality-related risks across operations and supply chains — and collecting data and metrics on these topics — is an important starting place for companies to prepare. Read our full summary here: https://lnkd.in/gZsym3ku

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) launched Human Rights Due Diligence and the Environment: A Practical Tool for Business (November 2024), which provides guidance for companies on how to incorporate environmental factors into human rights due diligence. See our key takeaways below: ⬇️ 1️⃣ Human rights and environmental impacts are deeply interconnected. Businesses that approach these topics holistically can better identify overlapping risks and develop effective solutions. This guide provides insights on how that can be done in practice by suggesting how to integrate environmental factors into HRDD processes. 2️⃣ The guide outlines overarching principles and specific recommendations for incorporating environmental, climate, and transition-related perspectives into the four HRDD components: identifying and assessing impacts, taking action, tracking progress, and communicating. Key principles and actions highlighted include breaking down internal silos; engaging external experts, especially rights-holders; consulting with affected communities; prioritising action for the most severe impacts; leveraging Indigenous knowledge and partnering with Indigenous communities on environmental protection; combining environmental, social and health factors into HRDD; and conducting integrated due diligence on an ongoing basis. 3️⃣ The guide also highlights how companies' transition plans (e.g., shifts in land use, increased demand for transition minerals, job displacement) and adaptation to climate change (e.g., through infrastructure development, addressing heat stress) can have significant human rights implications. This is a perspective on the scope of HRDD that we too have shared, including in our recent briefing note on Navigating the Just Transition: Practical Steps for Business Leaders. We are particularly pleased to see it taken on by UNDP. 4️⃣ In addition, the guidance highlights that a long-term perspective is essential for environmentally-informed HRDD: businesses should assess potential impacts beyond traditional planning cycles, considering effects through 2030 or 2050, even if these impacts are not immediately apparent. Again, we are pleased to see this aligns with our existing advice on this matter. 5️⃣ Cumulative environmental impacts are another key consideration also contemplated by the guide, which we strongly agree with. Companies are encouraged to examine how their actions interact with those of other entities to address combined effects on communities and ecosystems. 6️⃣ Is this HRDD+E approach just about compliance? While legislation increasingly mandates integrated HRDD+E approaches, this holistic perspective is also driven by stakeholders, including NGOs, rights-holders, investors, and consumers who are increasingly holding companies accountable for environmental, climate and transitional impacts on human rights. See link to the full summary in the comments below 👇

🌍Today is Human Rights Day! 🌍 This day reminds us that respecting human rights isn’t optional—it’s a global responsibility, a legal expectation in many countries, and a business imperative everywhere.   So, the key question is: How can companies turn responsibility into action?  💡 Here are 5 practical steps your company can take today to advance its commitment to human rights:  📝 Review Your Policies  Do you have a clear and robust human rights policy? Does it align with global standards and meet stakeholder expectations?   📚 Educate and Empower  Have you got trainings and sessions that can help raise awareness about human rights and how they intersect with your business?  🔎 Prioritize What Matters Most  Do you know what your human rights priorities are, and where they are – based on the risk-based methodology of salience?  🤝 Collaborate for Impact  Are you working with peers, suppliers, and stakeholders to address the most salient issues?   📣 Communicate Openly  Are you transparent about your journey – and sharing successes, challenges, and lessons learned along the way?  🕊️ Every action counts. What’s one step your organization can take today—big or small—to respect human rights? Share your ideas below and let’s lead by example.