Listen to Fernanda Hopenhaym, Chair of the United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights.
The new Chair of the United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights, Fernanda Hopenhaym, joins Frankly Speaking to reflect on the key insights from last week’s global gathering of 1000 businesses, government and civil society representatives. A Uruguayan Mexican researcher and advocate who has been active in civil society organisations and social movements for over 20 years, Fernanda is currently the executive director of PODER, which promotes corporate transparency and accountability across Latin American countries.
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“A key message of this year’s UN Forum was ‘We need to listen to people firsthand’. If I'm a company, I need to sit down with rights-holders directly, not just through advisors that tell me how to engage with communities. I heard from different rights-holders that they felt they were outside in front of the UN protesting. And now they are in the room, not only as audience, but with a mike in the panel. That's a long way to go!”
Is it really is possible for companies to "do the right thing"?
There's very little pressure being applied to companies by investors looking at how they're actually behaving and treating human rights as a core business priority. This needs to change.
Investors shouldn't just take companies' word for what they're doing; they should investigate what the companies are actually doing regarding human rights.
