Companies can both positively and negatively impact the lives of their staff, the workers in their supply chains, the communities around their operations, and society more widely. Many of these negative impacts – large and small – are avoidable. If every business understood how its actions could undermine respect for human rights and took proactive steps to prevent their impacts, the world would be a different place. Responsible business prevents potential harms, ensures accountability and delivers lasting value.
Founded in 2009, IHRB is the leading international think tank on business and human rights. IHRB’s mission is to shape policy, advance practice and strengthen accountability in order to make respect for human rights part of everyday business.
IHRB’s programmes are organised around key ‘flows’ fundamental to social and economic development, namely: flows of workers, flows of finance, flows of commodities and flows of information. These underpin IHRB’s work on migrant workers and the financial, extractives and ICT sectors respectively. In addition, IHRB is developing a programme on human rights and mega-sporting events and is a founding partner in the development of the first wide-scale benchmark on corporate human rights performance.
IHRB works across its programmes with public and private sector partners in both developing and developed countries. In particular, IHRB has founded centres for responsible business in Myanmar, Kenya and Colombia that mirror its mission and activities at a local level