Peoples' Forum on Human Rights & Business

The Inaugural Peoples’ Forum on Human Rights & Business

Towards Binding Regulation and Effective Remedy

Bangkok, November 5-7, 2013

This will be the first of what is an annual People’s Forum, which is a global corporate accountability gathering for groups and affected people using human rights to directly challenge corporate abuses of human rights, and improve systems of regulation and remedy. The participants will be ESCR-Net members and civil society allies, including social movements, sub-national, national and international corporate accountability advocates. The objectives of the Forum are to:

1.      Facilitate development of collective long-term strategies (at all levels) that build and strengthen systems which can address the root causes of corporate abuse of human rights & the environment 

2.      Help facilitate unified civil society public positions on key corporate accountability issues relevant for our global movement 

3.      Ensure participation and sharing of perspectives of all groups in the corporate accountability movement, particularly representatives of affected people, not just well-resourced civil society groups 

4.      Exchange strategies for effectively challenging cases of corporate abuse of human rights & the environment 

5.      Build solidarity across all participants, in order to foster greater support for each other’s work 

6.      Set the 2014 priorities for the collective work of the ESCR-Net Corporate Accountability Working Group (CAWG)

There will be a mix of different types of sessions at the Peoples' Forum.  There will be:

• Case Strategy sessions where representatives of affected communities share their successful strategies for challenging specific cases of corporate human rights violations; 
• Panel sessions where experienced members and allies share their insights into challenges and opportunities in the corporate accountability movement; 
• Skills-sharing Roundtables where members and allies lead collective discussions with participants on specific skills for using mechanisms and approaches for challenging cases of corporate human rights violations, and;
• Long-term strategy discussions to develop concrete proposal for collaborative approaches to some of the most important opportunities for progress in the corporate accountability movement, that can provide benefit for all of our work.