The FCO’s human rights work in 2012

Written evidence from UNICEF (HR 04)

1. SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS

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

1.2 The Government should prioritise the publication of its long-awaited strategy on Business and Human Rights and ensure that it pays particular attention to children’s rights because of the significant potential for irreversible harm to be done during childhood.

1.3 The Government should ensure that the strategy on Business and Human Rights meets the standards set out in the General Comment on Child Rights and Business and use this as a framework for implementing the Convention on the Rights of the Child as a whole with regard to the business sector. [1]

1.4 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).

1.5 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.

1.6 The Government should consider linking provision of Government procurement opportunities, investment support and export credit guarantees to UK businesses’ human rights, and children’s rights, records overseas.

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 and Commonwealth Office (FCO).

2.3 UNICEF UK welcomes the publication of ‘Human Rights and Democracy: the 2012 Foreign and Commonwealth Office Report’ (the 2012 Report), particularly the written commitment to consider children’s rights as an integral part of the FCO’s wider international human rights agenda.

2.4 This submission focuses on how the Government’s forthcoming 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.

2.5 In addition, 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 2012 Report does not cover children’s rights comprehensively, but rather reports sporadically on a small number of individual rights, such as education.

2.6 We are further concerned that despite the recommendation of the Foreign Affairs Committee to the FCO to ‘undertake urgent work to address negative perceptions among voluntary sector groups of its commitment to children’s human rights abroad’ [2] , the Bond Child Rights Group considers the 2012 Report to lack any tangible progress on the indicators below:

· 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.’ [3]  

As stated in the Bond Child Rights Group’s submission, it is imperative that these factors are addressed, and greater priority 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 2012 Report on Human Rights and Democracy, in particular the commitment to publish a national strategy to implement the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in early 2013.

3.2 The Business and Human Rights Strategy was originally due in mid-2012. UNICEF UK urges the Government to prioritise the publication of this strategy and avoid any further delay. The strategy provides an excellent opportunity for the UK Government to show leadership in an area in which there is tremendous international interest, from other States, businesses and civil society.

3.3 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.

3.4 UNICEF UK hopes that the strategy will signpost key tools and initiatives which can assist companies in respecting human rights. However, for the strategy to be credible, it must go beyond describing current practice and promoting voluntary initiatives. The UK Government must stick to the ‘smart mix’ of policy, guidance and appropriate regulation set out in the Guiding Principles, not water it down. A re-labelling of the existing status quo will not be sufficient. As well as a missed opportunity, it would be a fundamental misinterpretation of the Guiding Principles.

3.5 The strategy should establish a process for identifying key pieces of legislation which require businesses to respect human rights, and set out a timetable for assessing whether these laws are adequate and addressing identified gaps. It should also set out measures that will ensure new legislation and policies do not constrain but enable business respect for human rights.

3.6 Continuous child-rights impact assessments are critical to ensuring that the best interests of the child are a primary consideration in business-related legislation and policy development. These can predict the impact of any proposed business-related policy, legislation, regulations, budget or other administrative decisions which affect children and the enjoyment of their rights [4] and should complement ongoing monitoring and evaluation of the impact of laws, policies and programmes on children’s rights.

3.7 The UN Guiding Principles set out that businesses should respect the rights of people belonging to ‘specific groups or populations that require particular attention’, with a specific mention of children. [5] 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. [6]

3.8 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 2012 Report does not reference child rights within its section on ‘Human Rights in Promoting Britain’s Prosperity’. [7] We would like to draw the Committee’s attention to the importance of recognising child rights as distinct from ‘human rights’ more broadly.

3.9 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.

3.10 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.

3.11 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.

3.12 The UK Government should encourage a business culture that understands, respects and supports children’s rights. To achieve this, the Government should develop guidance that explicitly sets out government expectations for business enterprises to respect children’s rights in the context of its own business activities, as well as within business relationships linked to operations, products or services and activities abroad when they operate globally.

3.13 UNICEF UK would like to draw the attention of the Committee to the Children’s Rights & Business Principles (CRBP). [8] 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.

3.14 The 2012 Report states that the Business and Human Rights toolkit has been updated to include the FCO’s work on the UN Guiding Principles. [9] According to the FCO, the toolkit "helps our embassies and high commissions to engage on this issue with host governments and business. We also updated government training for trade and commercial officers working in the UK and overseas to place greater emphasis on respect for human rights." [10]

3.15 UNICEF UK notes the lack of any reference to child rights in the revised toolkit. This suggests a lack of understanding of how businesses have the potential to cause lasting damage to children’s lives if they do not make a comprehensive assessment of how their operations impact on children’s 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.

3.16 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.

3.17 U NICEF UK notes that the 2012 Report refers to 'business' without distinguishing between companies that 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, [11] 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.

3.18 UNICEF UK also believes that the Government should consider linking provision of Government procurement opportunities, investment support and export credit guarantees to UK businesses’ human rights, and children’s rights, records overseas.

3.19 The way in which the new strategy will be monitored and reviewed will be critical to its effectiveness. A multi-stakeholder, 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.

3.20 UNICEF would like to draw the attention of the Committee to the recently published General Comment on State obligations regarding the impact of the business sector on children's rights. [12] The Committee on the Rights of the Child is first UN human rights treaty body to address this issue directly in a General Comment. The General Comment is an authoritative interpretation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Optional Protocols with regard to the responsibility of States parties to provide protection, ensure respect for and remedy abuses of child rights that may arise from the actions or omissions of business enterprises and multinational companies.

3.21 It provides States with a framework for implementing the Convention with regard to the business sector in key areas, including on how States should ensure that the activities and operations of business enterprises do not adversely impact on children’s rights; how to create an enabling and supportive environment for business enterprises to respect children’s rights including across any business relationships linked to their operations, products or services and across their global operations; and, how to ensure access to effective remedy for children whose rights have been infringed by a business enterprise.

3.22 According to the General Comment "States are obliged to integrate and apply the principle of ‘best interests of the child’ in all legislative, administrative and judicial proceedings concerning business activities and operations that directly or indirectly impact on children." [13] In this context, the UK Government must ensure that the best interests of the child are central to the development of legislation and policies relating to employment, taxation, corruption, privatisation, transport and other general economic, trade or financial issues.

3.23 The General Comment also makes clear that States are obliged to provide effective remedies and reparations for violations of the rights of the child, including by third parties such as business enterprises. Meeting this obligation requires having in place child-sensitive mechanisms that are known by children and their representatives, that are accessible and that provide adequate reparation for harm suffered.

3.24 The Government should ensure that the strategy on Business and Human Rights meets the standards set out in the General Comment on State on Child Rights and Business and use this as a framework for implementing the Convention on the Rights of the Child as a whole with regard to the business sector.

22 May 2013