#UPDATE: Adam Kanzer from Domini Social Investments, who is also testifying at the hearing today, will be speaking specifically to the Ruggie framework referenced below. Tune in at 2pm EST (10pm Sudan)
U.S.-based citizen advocacy for Darfur has not had the impact on Darfur that activists who first got involved had hoped. But what it has done is put some pieces in place that can, if implemented thoughtfully and sustained over time, improve the international community’s response to mass atrocity crimes in the future. One of the most promising of these pieces comes from the groundwork laid by the Conflict Risk Network (formerly the Sudan Divestment Task Force) and Investors Against Genocide.
Today, Eric Cohen of Investors Against Genocide will testify before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on International Monetary Policy and Trade, urging Congress to adopt legislative recommendations to “provide useful guidance for financial institutions regarding human rights abuses, without limiting their ability to make the investments they choose . . . [and] . . . make it much easier for individual investors to be able to choose to avoid connections to the worst human rights abuses.”
You can watch the hearing live at this weblink, starting at 2pm EST.
On a related note, Harvard professor John Ruggie has, over the past five years, been doing something that too few manage – taken on one of the UNSG’s Special Representative positions and actually started to move a complex issue forward. Tasked with looking at the challenges that lie at the intersection of business and human rights, he has been doing extensive global and interdisciplinary stakeholder consultations; his recommendations in the form of a draft Guiding Principles are now open for comment.
The Guidelines “elaborate and clarify for companies, states, and other stakeholders how they can operationalize the UN ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ Framework” which was endorsed unanimously by the UN Human Rights Council in 2008. You can access the guidelines and a forum to debate them online until Jan. 31, 2011.
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