When Chris Avery brought me on to join the team that he was starting with Annabel Short in fall 2003, having just founded Business & Human Rights Resource Centre a year before in London, the organization’s vision for action was simple but powerful:

• To bring together the cases and stories of how companies impact workers, communities and other peole, and create a public record of every major company’s conduct.
• To put the voices of affected people, of small NGOs, and of local media in the global South on the same footing as corporate PR departments, the UN, and major global media.
• To push this information out to those who could make a difference with companies – investors, governments, civil society, media, brands and other business partners, academic experts, and companies’ employees and managers themselves.
• To get companies to respond publicly to the concerns of civil society.
• To highlight emerging good practice wherever we found it, and support crucial policy developments in policy in this field, nationally, regionally and internationally.

All this without fear or favour, allying ourselves to the cause of human rights in business, but with strong values of fairness and objectivity. Our model as an honest broker has shown itself able to secure responses to human rights concerns from companies that do not answer much larger NGOs and media houses – much less small local groups.

I was driven to join this team, and saw the need for the Resource Centre, because of a basic, undeniable observation: Companies have enormous power over people’s lives.

Very often, governments cannot or will not protect workers’, consumers’ and communities’ rights from the possibility – and in many cases, the terrifying reality – of companies’ power to generate wealth for a few at the expense of safe workplaces, shared natural resources, and core values like privacy and public health. In other cases, companies pursue profit by partnering with governments but ignore horrific abuses that they are enabling -- such as those companies whose oil production provided royalties to Sudan’s government, and allowed it to carry out its genocidal wars.

Yet companies are also sensitive to reputational damage, with the public, with investors, and with myriad business partners. And some act on the moral and the business cases for respecting human rights. Unfortunately, while some companies have taken meaningful steps in that direction, the Resource Centre is just as needed today.

But my time here is now coming to an end. I will be moving on shortly, to work for a funder with a priority focus on human rights in the global economy. It has not been an easy decision, but change and renewal are crucial for all organizations, and people. We have thrived under Phil Bloomer’s leadership since Chris retired in 2013, and I can’t wait to see the ways that the Resource Centre will grow and flourish without me.

We still heed our founding vision today, but the model of the organization has developed far beyond that original small team. Crucially, we started early to build a truly global organization, with researchers bringing local expertise, personal contact and representation, and language capabilities beyond English. For years now, our global team has had as many members outside its UK and US offices, mostly in countries like Colombia, India, Jordan, Senegal, and South Africa, as in London, New York and Washington.

I believe deeply in this network of regional researchers and experts, who work heroically, on their own. They are vital to firmly root our actions in the experiences of people in all regions where companies have an impact – which is to say everywhere; and to engage with multinational companies where they are based – also, increasingly, everywhere.

We raise human rights issues with Chinese companies in Chinese, for example, ferreting out individuals who will answer for the company’s conduct. We are still perhaps the only organization in the world who does this systematically. I remember a story about our former Hong Kong-based researcher going beyond our usual persistent follow-up phone calls and staking out the office of one company to secure a response.

Our team and budget are still small, given our ambitions to press companies in all sectors, in all countries, to respect all human rights. I’m proud of how much we’ve done and how we have grown in our methods and reach, with staff around the world leading deeper engagement on key topics such as corporate legal accountability and modern slavery.

For example, my three colleagues and friends in Africa, Aliou Diouf, Joe Kibugu and Joy Mabenge, have successfully pushed us to work more directly with affected communities. In just one recent case, a community in Kenya had for decades been cut off from access to health care and other essential services by a UK-owned company’s pineapple plantation. By working with them to clearly document and present their concerns to the company, Joe helped them obtain an access road in just a few months. This cut hours from their trips to reach schools, clinics, and markets; previously they had had to walk 10 km around the concession.

This example illustrates one major shortcoming of a number of initiatives on business and human rights to date: Many efforts are not guided by those whose rights are affected, and don’t build social movements demanding that companies respect human rights. This absence hamstrings their legitimacy and effectiveness; there is often little public voice backing up human rights experts’ advocacy. The business and human rights community could learn much from the trade union movement and others who have likewise organised communities and the public to demand social and environmental justice.

I will miss being directly involved in the work, but am thrilled to be able to support it from a new vantage point. And I will miss my colleagues most of all, especially the kindness, passion, intelligence, and humility that every member of the Resource Centre has brought to its mission. I look forward to continuing to work with this exceptional community to work toward a reality where respect for human rights by companies is as unsurprising as tomorrow’s sunrise.

Greg’s last day at the Resource Centre is Friday 4 August. Keep in touch! @gregaignon / gregaignon (at) yahoo.com