Speakers:

• Maria Amália Souza, Founder, Casa Socio-Environmental Fund
• Lloyd Kuveya, Assistant Director, African Coalition for Corporate Accountability
• Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
• Marianna Leite, Director of Program, Center for Economic and Social Rights
• Grace Maingi, Executive Director, Kenya Community Development Foundation

Business activities in global value chains have significant, and often harmful, impacts on rightsholders. Despite this, the funding landscape for efforts to hold businesses accountable to human rights and environmental standards is small and narrowing. In recent years there has been a growing trend towards mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence (mHREDD) laws which impose legally binding obligations on companies to identify and assess risks of human rights violations and environmental harms in their value chains, prevent harms from occurring, and respond to harms which have occurred. The rise of mHREDD legislation represents an opportunity to strengthen accountability of business actors and thereby act as an amplifier on a wide range of human rights, development, peacebuilding and climate outcomes.

However, as Swedwatch's recent report highlighted, this opportunity will only be met if funders and donors invest with the funding necessary to enable worker and community-driven approaches to human rights and environmental due diligence. Centering workers and communities most vulnerable to business activities requires shifting power to those communities and a corresponding systems-oriented funding strategy which embraces decolonial approaches. This webinar will explore different strategies, funding models, and approaches to investing in worker and community driven due diligence which truly center workers and communities.