Business & Human Rights Resource Center

Based: London, UK

Website: www.business-humanrights.org

Headlines: The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre is the world’s leading independent resource on the subject.  The website is updated hourly with news and reports about companies’ human rights impacts worldwide, positive and negative. Responses are sought from companies, ensuring that the coverage is balanced and encouraging companies to address concerns raised by civil society.  The website covers over 4000 companies, 180 countries, 150 issues – and provides tools & resources. Topics include discrimination, environment, poverty & development, labour, access to medicines, health & safety, security, trade. The site provides materials in English, Spanish and French, with some English translations of items in other languages (including Chinese and Russian).

Change agent: Chris Avery, Director.

Theory of change: “No debate can move forward, no positive change can be made, without facts.  The Resource Centre is the only website to provide such a broad range of balanced information on business and human rights—company by company, country by country, issue by issue.” So says Mary Robinson (Director of Realizing Rights, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and President of Ireland). The Resource Centre drives progress by:

• Making the impacts of companies more transparent: highlighting reports about company misconduct (to enhance accountability), and reports of “best practice” (to provide increased recognition).
• Providing easy, one-stop access to information for NGOs, companies, governments and others, to assist them in their work.
• Facilitating constructive, informed decision-making and public discussion.

The aim: To encourage companies to respect human rights, avoid harm to people, and maximise their positive contribution.

Nature of engagement: John Elkington has supported B&HRRC since its founding in 2002, by providing meeting space via SustainAbility in the early years before the Resource Centre had its own offices, as a member of the Board of Trustees and now as Senior Advisor.

Why we engage - and indicators of success: Among the measures of success here are the success of Chris Avery and his team in winning foundation and other forms of support — something they have been increasingly effective in doing. But one of the most interesting examples of the Centre’s impact was when we spotted key elements of its approach imported wholesale into the sustainable logistics methodology of another of the organisations we support, EcoVadis.

Change agent’s indicators of success: Chris Avery explains: “The Resource Centre measures its success by factors including:

• companies whose conduct it makes more transparent: over 4000
• NGO/civil society concerns website draws to international attention: over 5000
• positive company initiatives on website: over 1000
• examples of positive change in company conduct where Resource Centre played a role: many
• average speed in seeking response from firm’s headquarters when allegation received: 15 minutes
• response rate when Resource Centre seeks company responses: 80%
• subscribers to free Weekly Update: over 6000
• website hits: over 1.5 million per month
• countries & territories where its website is used each month: 196
• developing countries among top 10 countries with most users of its website: 4 (China, India, Philippines, South Africa)
• proportion of team based outside Europe and North America: nearly half (in Hong Kong, India, South Africa, Ukraine).”

Contact at Volans: John Elkington.