This year constitutes the 10th anniversary of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The principles are “a set of guidelines for States and companies to prevent and address human rights abuses committed in business operations”. Since the release of the principles in 2011, businesses have increasingly started to accept and adopt their responsibility in human rights due diligence and addressing violations.  

A report by the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights (2021), highlights that there are still too many human rights abuses in business-related contexts2. This might not come as a surprise, as out of the global corporations surveyed, almost half had at least one severe allegation of human rights violation in 2020.  

Another recently released report “Status of Human Rights Performance of Finnish Companies” (SIHTI) found that in the Finnish context, companies are just now beginning the process of human rights due diligence. So how can companies, with complex, global supply chains, tackle human rights due diligence and violation issues on a practical level? 

In this episode of Sustainability Unwrapped, Nikodemus Solitander, Director of Centre for Corporate Responsibility (CCR) at Hanken and co-author of the SIHTI report discusses with Lea Rankinen, Director of Sustainability and Public Affairs at Paulig about the human rights responsibilities of Paulig Group, a Finnish food and beverage company, and how they work with human rights issues on a practical level. 

This episode of Sustainability Unwrapped is part of a longer SIHTI podcast series on human rights in Finnish companies. See the previous SIHTI podcast episode here. 

Listen to previous episodes at podcast website:  https://blogs.hanken.fi/sustainability-unwrapped/