Foreign Affairs CommitteeWritten evidence from UNICEF

1. Summary of Recommendations

1.1 The FCO should accord greater priority to child rights within its work to promote human rights overseas.

1.2 The Government must ensure that its new strategy on Business and Human Rights pays particular attention to child rights because of the potential for irreversible harm to be done during childhood.

1.3 The strategy on Business and Human Rights should reference key tools for businesses to use in assessing their impact on child rights, such as the Children’s Rights and Business Principles (CRBP).

1.4 Government departments should actively press their corporate partners, contractors and suppliers to demonstrate evidence of compliance with international human rights regulations and standards, including those relating to child rights.

2. Introduction

2.1 UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, is mandated by the UN General Assembly to advocate for the protection of children’s rights, to help meet their basic needs and to expand their opportunities to reach their full potential. UNICEF is guided by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and strives to establish children’s rights as enduring ethical principles and international standards of behaviour towards children.

2.2 The UK National Committee for UNICEF (UNICEF UK) welcomes the opportunity to submit evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee’s (FAC) inquiry into the human rights work of the Foreign Commonwealth Officer (FCO).

2.3 This submission focuses on how the Government’s new strategy on Business and Human Rights should define the relationship between the FCO’s human rights work and the promotion of UK economic and commercial interests in UK foreign policy.

2.4 However, we fully support and endorse the evidence and recommendations laid out in the Bond Child Rights Group’s submission to the FAC’s inquiry. In particular we are concerned that the 2011 Report does not cover the full spectrum of children’s rights issues and does not adequately incorporate children’s rights in general into the analysis of the FCO’s human rights work or the human rights situation in the countries covered by the report.

2.5 We are further concerned that the 2011 Report reflects the FCO’s de-prioritisation of children’s rights. This worrying trend has already/also previously been evidenced by:

the lack of a child rights-focused member of the FCO’s Human Rights Advisory Panel;

the expiration of the FCO’s child rights strategy and the decision not to renew or replace it;

the lapse of the Child Rights Panel; and

the FCO’s position that its “centrally-driven human rights priorities do not include child rights.”1

2.6 As stated in the Bond Child Rights Group’s submission, these factors must be addressed, and greater priority should be accorded to child rights within the FCO’s human rights work.

3. Business and Child Rights

3.1 UNICEF UK welcomes the information on business and human rights provided in the FCO’s 2011 Report on Human Rights and Democracy. UNICEF UK looks forward to hearing how the UK Government intends to implement the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in its forthcoming UK strategy on Business and Human Rights.

3.2 The strategy has the potential to provide much needed clarity across Whitehall departments. It is vital that all government departments take the same approach in ensuring a high regard for human rights is upheld no matter what economic and commercial interests are being promoted. While recognising the limitations of voluntary initiatives. UNICEF UK hopes that the strategy will signpost key tools and initiatives which can assist companies in respecting human rights.

3.3 The UN Guiding Principles set out that businesses should respect the rights of people belonging to “specific groups or populations that require particular attention”.2 They direct businesses to address their most severe human rights impacts as well as those impacts where the harm will be irreversible if action is delayed.3

3.4 In this context, UNICEF UK urges the UK Government to pay full attention to the rights of children in relation to the UK’s implementation of the UN Guiding Principles. We were disappointed to see that the FCO’s 2011 Human Rights and Democracy Report does not reference child rights within its section on “Promoting Responsible Business Practice”. We would like to draw the Committee’s attention to the importance of recognising child rights as distinct from “human rights” more broadly.

3.5 Proper consideration of child rights as they relate to business involves recognising children (at home and abroad) as stakeholders of business across the full spectrum of a company’s operations—from their products, services and marketing, through to their relationship with employees and governments, their investment in local communities and their impact on the environment in which children live.

3.6 It is vital for businesses to consider how their operations impact on children because childhood is a period when children’s physical, mental and emotional well-being can be permanently influenced, with consequences for the future economic development of developing countries. To give some examples, poor nutrition at an early age can impede a child’s growth, health and behavioural development for the rest of their lives. Missing a period of education because of disruption to their community or environment can be critical to a child’s long term educational achievements. Exposure to a pollutant can be far more harmful to a child than to an adult, owing to children’s developing immune systems and higher skin surface area in relation to their body weight.

3.7 It is also important for the UK Government to understand the linkages between business and child rights if further progress is to be made towards the UN Millennium Development Goals. In many developing and low-income countries, children constitute around half of the population. Children and young people also make up the overwhelming majority of those affected by poverty, yet they have the least capacity to support or protect themselves. While governments have the ultimate duty to protect, respect and fulfil children’s rights, the private sector has enormous potential to affect children’s lives, positively and negatively, at home and abroad.

3.8 Until now, corporate responsibility towards children has too often focused only on child labour. UNICEF UK would like to draw the attention of the Committee to the recently released Children’s Rights & Business Principles (CRBP).4 The CRBP takes a more comprehensive approach to business and child rights than previous initiatives. It sets out ten guiding principles to enable businesses to understand and address their impacts on the rights and well-being of children, and calls on businesses to give explicit consideration to children’s rights across the full spectrum of their corporate functions. It is precisely the sort of tool which could be promoted to UK businesses to ensure that a child rights perspective is taken on board in their human rights assessments.

3.9 The FCO’s 2011 Report on Human Rights and Democracy (“Case Study: The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights”) says that as part of the forthcoming strategy the FCO will carry out training on business and human rights for relevant staff, re-launch the FCO Business and Human Rights Toolkit and update its Overseas Business Risk service. It also states that it will signpost “other voluntary initiatives, guidance and best practice” to businesses.5

3.10 UNICEF UK welcomes the range of actions which the FCO plans to carry out, but notes the lack of any reference to child rights. This suggests a lack of understanding of how businesses have the potential to cause lasting damage to children’s rights and wellbeing if they do not make a comprehensive assessment of how their operations impact on child rights. The UK Government must ensure that its new strategy on Business and Human Rights pays particular attention to child rights because of the potential for irreversible harm during childhood.

3.11 UNICEF UK also believes that the new strategy on Business and Human Rights should reference key tools for businesses to use in assessing their impact on child rights, such as the CRBP.

3.12 UNICEF UK notes that the FCO’s 2011 Democracy and Human Rights Report refers to “business” without distinguishing between companies which work directly with government and those which do not. At a time when both the FCO and the Department for International Development (DFID) are strategically scaling up their work with corporate partners,6 it seems reasonable that government departments should explicitly require, rather than simply “encourage”, good corporate behaviour from their partners. Government departments should actively press their corporate partners, contractors and suppliers to demonstrate evidence of compliance with international human rights regulations and standards, including those relating to child rights.

3.13 For example, companies should be required to show how a child rights perspective is being included in their human rights assessments (using the framework of the CRBP).

3.14 We also note that the Foreign Secretary has announced an additional £1.5 million in funding this year to support the FCO’s human rights work, and that the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights will be one of two specific areas to benefit from this increased budget.7 We hope that in due course the FCO will set out further details about how this additional budget will be spent.

3.15 The way in which the new strategy will be monitored and reviewed will be critical to its effectiveness. An independent body with expertise on business and human rights, including child rights, should be established as part of the implementation of the strategy, with the authority to monitor how the strategy is being implemented across all government departments, and to publish its findings at set intervals.

25 May 2012