Sometimes, when I’m in a room full of human rights advisors from companies - across sectors and geographies - debating the complexities of applying human rights to business, I get a flash of another room I sat in twenty years ago. 🌍
Back then, the discussions were led by John Ruggie. We were grappling with an idea that, at the time, felt both ambitious and necessary: that companies would need dedicated human rights expertise. That they would need to create new roles, or even entire functions, focused specifically on understanding and managing their human rights impacts.
I remember the sheer excitement I had at this idea ✨
The idea that human rights would become important enough for companies to hire specialists felt almost too good to be true.
Of course, roles in sustainability, ethical trade, and corporate responsibility already existed, but they were not yet grounded in internationally recognised human rights standards, nor did they have a shared framework, like the UN Guiding Principles, to guide action.
Today, that picture has fundamentally changed.
We now have a growing, global community of business and human rights professionals - embedded within companies, and advising from the outside, shaping how organisations think about their human rights responsibility. 🌐
And this community is only set to grow, as regulatory developments such as the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), import bans, and other legal frameworks continue to raise expectations 📈
It is absolutely amazing to see how far the field has come, and I love doing this time travel exercise to remind myself of this.
And yet, the work ahead remains deeply challenging.
I see three fundamental challenges that define the practice of business and human rights today:
1. The issues we are tackling are endemic
There is no such thing as an ‘easy’ salient human rights issue. If it were easy to solve, it would no longer be salient.
The human rights issues companies are grappling with - low wages, discrimination, forced labour, child labour etc. - are systemic, entrenched, and tend to be rooted in broader economic and social structures. They cannot be solved by a single intervention or a single actor.
They require coordinated and meaningful action with other stakeholders 🤝
They require persistence, and systems-thinking.
2. Companies’ supply chains are vast - and visibility is limited
Large companies operate within complex, and often opaque, value chains.
A company may have hundreds, or thousands, of direct suppliers - and many more beyond that, across multiple tiers. Responsibility does not stop at Tier 1, yet visibility often does.
This can feel overwhelming. We are managing risks far beyond the boundaries of the organisation, without full information about where those risks are or how they manifest. 💭
3. Human rights go to the core of the business model
But I think the most complex challenge of them all is that human rights are not peripheral - they are deeply intertwined with how business operates.
The most significant risks and impacts arise from everyday commercial decisions: how prices are negotiated, how timelines are set, how products are designed and marketed. These choices can shape whether workers are paid a living wage, whether working hours are sustainable, whether certain groups are more exposed to harm… and the list goes on.
This creates an ongoing tension between trying to reconcile cost management and financial efficiency with human rights respect ⚖️
Much of the work, in practice, lies in navigating this space - recognising the tensions, and acting thoughtfully to close the gap.
In light of this, I often come back to two reflections:
1️⃣ If the work feels hard, it’s because it is
This is challenging work. It involves navigating complexity, uncertainty, and competing pressures. It requires influencing short-term systems that are not designed with human rights respect in mind. 🧭
So if it feels difficult, that is normal. It is a reflection of the scale of the task.
Give yourself some grace as you advance.
2️⃣ But also, let’s ensure we don’t settle for easy solutions
Sometimes we need visible wins, and we need them fast. But let’s ensure we don’t stay there.
We cannot stay in the realm of ‘mandatory training for all suppliers’, ‘all major non-compliances closed out’, or ‘terminated relationships with a supplier.’
If actions are too manageable and comfortable, chances are they are not working…
The field of business and human rights has come such a long way.
The next phase will require us to go further - toward transforming the systems that make this work necessary in the first place 🚀
Anna 💫
