It’s time to act

10 December 2021

As the world comes together for Human Rights Day, the UN High Commissioner for business and human rights, Michelle Bartlett, is calling for a focus on equality ‘so that we recover better, fairer and greener from the pandemic’.  Building on her request in June, for States and businesses to step up and ‘make the next 10 years a decade of action on the Guiding Principles’.   

At twentyfifty we specialise in working with global companies on their journey from identifying their human rights impacts to addressing their social risks and becoming a sustainable business.   

We also help companies to contribute to a fairer and more inclusive world by tackling the root causes of inequality, such as living wage, women’s empowerment, and child labour.   

With 17 years of embedding human rights experience to share, we know that we have a role to play in enabling others to act. 

In our article ‘Why a human rights approach is the only way to meet your climate goals’, we call for human rights to be central to any climate change plan and for the views of rightsholders to be better integrated into the process to create the ‘better, fairer and greener’ future we need. 

In partnership with the German Global Compact Network, we have tapped into the experience of the first 10 years of the UNGPs to highlight five success factors that we think make human rights risk management truly effective. 

With our depth of experience, we are uniquely positioned to partner with German and international companies to respond to the German Supply Chain Act.  We see an exciting opportunity for companies to link their social and environmental agendas, creating more impactful corporate due diligence programmes.     

We have also defined five key success factors to make our work with clients even more powerful and effective: quality stakeholder engagement, skilful leadership of change, attention to human flourishing, ongoing technology innovation and facing the climate crisis. By working with clients to better integrate these concepts, we will help to deliver greater sustainability and impact in the decade ahead. 

As we celebrate Human Rights Day, we are excited about the next 10 years of action and partnering with companies for greater impact.