March 29 will see La Trobe Business School present a seminar looking in depth at the impact of human rights on business and featuring guest speakers Alexandra Guáqueta, member United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights and 2011 Australian of the Year, Simon McKeon.
The Business and Human Rights Seminar asks whether business and business schools can contribute towards a more just world where human dignity is valued rather than undermined.Organised by La Trobe Business School Professor Ken McPhail, the seminar is a response to an oversight by business and education institutions when it comes to promoting human rights.
‘The preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights calls on every organ of society to teach and educate for the promotion of the rights the Declaration contains.’ says Professor McPhail.
‘However, few if any business schools engage students in any kind of systematic or critical discussion of the relationship between business and human rights.’
The growing number of cases where large multinational corporations have been complicit in human rights violations, along with an increasing role for corporations in the provision of state services, has resulted in a number of new initiatives by the United Nations to bring the Universal Declaration to bear on business activity.
A newly established UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights of which Alexandra Guáqueta is a member, is promoting the implementation of the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, endorsed by the UN and adopted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The endorsement of the principles is widely regarded as one of the most significant developments in corporate social responsibility in the past decade.
This inaugural public seminar of the La Trobe Business School begins to explore how the discourse of international human rights is shifting to focus on the responsibilities of corporations in relation to the protection and promotion of human rights.