July 1, 2010: CALL for HUMAN RIGHTS REPORTS: The Business and Human Rights Documentation (B-HRD.org) Project

Español | Français | Português

We would like to encourage your participation in a new joint initiative of ESCR-Net and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at NYU School of Law. The Business and Human Rights Documentation (B-HRD) Project is a cutting edge advocacy and educational resource that digests existing, first-hand human rights documentation to identify the impacts businesses have across industries and regions on the full spectrum of rights embodied under international law.

Among other features, B-HRD.org will contain a database, which aims to compile all existing credible reports that use first-hand investigations and a rights-based framework to document business impacts on human rights. The reports contained in the database will be searchable by industry, geographic region, human right(s) affected, particular group(s) affected, and accountability mechanism(s).

To ensure it is comprehensive, we are now soliciting human rights reports from organizations which document business-related human rights abuses. In order to guarantee consistency and credibility, the reports will need to match the following key criteria:

• Only published reports (no newspaper articles, press releases, etc.);
• Reports must be the result of first-hand, on-site investigations, and should detail a research methodology (secondary research alone will not be included);
• Reports must use the human rights framework to analyze business impacts;
• Reports must describe a discernible business impact on human rights (reports concerning state-controlled business enterprises will be included, as will reports on corporate complicity in abusive government activities);
• Reports will be considered in various languages.

  We are eager to receive your reports by August 1, 2010. Please send the report(s) and whatever other related information to bhrdatabase@gmail.com. You can also send them by post to: Business and Human Rights Documentation (B-HRD) Project, c/o ESCR-Net, 211 East 43rd Street, #906, New York, NY 10017, USA.