16 June 2024
Over the last 20 years, twentyfifty has engaged with thousands of people affected by our clients’ business activities around the world. From farmers and factory workers to school children and truck drivers. It helps us to identify the impact of our clients’ operations and supply chains on people and communities.
Engaging with impacted people – known as rightsholders – is at the core of twentyfifty’s approach and allows us to support our clients in embedding effective human rights due diligence.
Since joining twentyfifty two years ago, I have worked on human rights impact assessments (HRIAs) and spoken with rightsholders in South and Southeast Asia, Africa and South America. Understanding rightsholders’ lived experiences, knowledge and expertise is the key to unlocking effective human rights due diligence.
Rightsholders rarely have the opportunity to speak to decision makers about how they, their families and their communities are negatively impacted by business activities. It is, therefore, crucial that businesses create opportunities for rightsholders to share their experiences, concerns and needs.
Who are rightsholders?
Rightsholders are individuals or groups whose human rights are or may be affected by business activities. Typically they include factory workers, farmers, farm workers and their families and members of local communities. These rightsholder groups can also reflect specific vulnerabilities or marginalisation: e.g. female farmers or workers belonging to racial, ethnic or religious minority groups.
What is rightsholder engagement?
The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) outline the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, describing the steps businesses should take to identify negative human rights impacts to which they may be connected.
As part of this process, the UNGPs require “meaningful consultation with potentially affected groups”, emphasising the importance of paying particular attention to those at heightened risk of vulnerability and marginalisation.
Why is meaningful rightsholder engagement so important?
Companies that systematically engage with the people and communities they rely on can foster a relationship of trust, transparency and open communication. This allows companies to identify problems early – both actual and potential – and take steps to support those who are impacted.
Conversely, companies that only engage with people and communities once a negative impact has already materialised may find it difficult to build the trust and credibility required to effectively address that impact.
Human rights due diligence is only effective when done with rightsholders, not to them. Including rightsholders as active participants in human rights due diligence processes amplifies their voices, allowing them to assert their rights. When farmers, workers and members of local communities feel empowered, they are more likely to voice their concerns. By listening to rightsholders, a business can increase engagement with its grievance mechanism and strengthen its ability to identify human and labour rights impacts on an ongoing basis.
When a business includes rightsholders in the decision-making process, it gains valuable insights that inform strategic decision-making. It also equips rightsholders and communities with the tools and knowledge (the business priorities or investment options) that they need to collaborate with other stakeholders effectively.
How does twentyfifty support clients to meaningfully engage with rightsholders?
While there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution, our approach includes:
Our network of in-country experts: we have an extensive global network of in-country experts and researchers that we collaborate with on HRIAs. They know the local language, the culture and working practices. They enable us to leverage our human rights expertise across cultural and linguistic contexts to meaningfully engage with rightsholders. Working with them ensures our approach is comprehensive, culturally sensitive and impactful.
Using a variety of engagement techniques: engaging with diverse groups of rightsholders requires diverse techniques to ensure that everybody feels able and comfortable to share their perspectives. My colleague Daisy Banda in Africa may use one-on-one interviews and focus group discussions or more participatory methods to encourage participation: for example, asking children to draw or act out what their daily routines look like to understand whether they are engaged in child labour.
Engaging with community-based stakeholders: while our research is centred in the voice of rightsholders, engaging with community-based stakeholders can help strengthen our findings. My colleague Rishi Singh in India, may speak to schoolteachers, medical professionals and union leaders as they often play an important role at the heart of their communities and can provide valuable insights. For example, schoolteachers help us understand patterns in absenteeism and whether these are linked to child labour, medical professionals help us identify patterns in illness and disease and whether there is a link to work.
