Corporate Social Responsibility & The Law

Foley Hoag’s unique Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practice was launched in 2000 and provides counsel to multinational companies, governments, and multilateral institutions regarding social, political, and environmental challenges.

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By: Foley Hoag LLP

Blog Authors

Helen Clapp
Isa Mirza
Sarah A. Altschuller
Vivek Krishnamurthy

Latest from Corporate Social Responsibility & The Law

On January 22, an independent commission of three parliamentarians established to review the UK’s Modern Slavery Act released the second of four installments of its report suggesting amendments and improvements to the 2015 law. This instalment of the report covers compliance with the Act and quality of the modern slavery statements companies subject to the law are required to submit. The UK Minister for Crime, Safeguarding and Vulnerability, Victoria Atkins MP, ordered the review in …
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Tiffany & Company announced last week that it would become the world’s first jewelry company to share with its consumers information about the country of origin of each diamond they sell. This is the first in a step of transparency measures that the company is undertaking. By 2020, Tiffany hopes to provide its customers with information about where each diamond was cut, polished, and set; and in the future it aspires to disclose to…
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Following the publication of a landmark report this September that makes the case for businesses to secure “the shared space” in which enterprises and civil society both operate, last month a group of eight leading organizations released a statement supporting civic freedoms, human rights defenders, and the rule of law. The statement, which is signed by companies including Unilever, Adidas and AngloAmerican, recognizes human rights defenders as “important partners in identifying risks or problems in…
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Eleanor Roosevelt, the moral force behind the UDHR. At the same time, we must remember that these worrisome trends are but half of the story. There is the considerable Evidence for Hope that the renowned human rights scholar Kathryn Sikkink lays out in her recent book, from the creation of effective mechanisms to hold human rights violators to account, to the headline fact that more of us live in rights-respecting societies today than at any…
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On November 29, Australia became only the second country in the world to enact legislation to fight modern slavery when the country’s Parliament passed the Modern Slavery Act. The new Australian legislation is similar to the UK’s Modern Slavery Act, which was enacted in 2015, inasmuch as both statutes seek to fight modern slavery by getting companies to crack down on such practices in their supply chains. There are, however, important differences between…
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On November 12, The Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB) released the results of its 2018 Corporate Human Rights Benchmark.  The 2018 Corporate Human Rights Benchmark assesses over 100 of the largest publicly traded multinational companies in the world on a set of key human rights indicators, including governance policies, remedies and grievance mechanisms, responding to serious allegations, due diligence, and transparency. Established in 2013, The Corporate Human Rights Benchmark is a non-profit multi-stakeholder initiative…
On September 26, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations approved the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act of 2018 (H.R. 2200).  The bill would reauthorize the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.  In July 2017, the House passed its version of H.R. 2200. Of potential consequence for companies, Section 133 of H.R. 2200 would enhance the List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor that is issued and updated…
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The relationship between companies and civil society can often be acrimonious, yet in the current geopolitical environment, they share more interests in common than one might think. This is the key insight that underpins new guidance authored by Bennett Freeman and others for the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre and two partner organizations on the role that companies should play in protecting the “shared space” they occupy with civil society. This “shared space,” which…
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It’s Friday and time for another overview of developments in the field of business and human rights that we’ve been monitoring. This week’s post includes: new guidance on compliance with North Korea-related sanctions laws; the release of the first annual report by the parties to the Dutch Banking Sector Agreement on International Responsible Business Conduct; and a new blog series on the “zero draft” of the proposed Treaty on Business and Human Rights. On July…
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On August 7, the Omidyar Network’s Tech and Society Solutions Lab and the Institute for the Future (“IFTF”) launched a new toolkit, The Ethical Operating System (Ethical OS), to help guide technologists in building preventing, mitigation, and correcting the “social downsides” of technology while also maximizing positive impacts. The guide, which has already been piloted by 20 companies, uses checklists, scenarios, and exercises to help companies anticipate problems and to develop appropriate strategies to mitigate…