The Human Right Opportunity For Business
This article represents Emerging Leaders model of how three of the core global issues of development – Human Rights, the Sustainable Development Goals and Productive Youth Citizens – are integrated into one powerful agenda, and how business and global supply chains are perfectly positioned to make a significant impact in all three. Secondly this article demonstrates what Emerging Leaders has learned in the past 10 years about how to make an integrated, holistic intervention through the business into their local communities, in a way that benefits the business and yet makes the community safer (the basis of all poverty reduction), increases local GDP and community well-being. The three core measures of a thriving community.
Give a person a fish?
A well-known saying in the world of human development is “give a person a fish and feed them for a day; teach them how to fish and feed them for a life time”. True or not true? Emerging Leaders would say ‘not quite true’. Why? Because what happens when the fish stocks end? What happens when the river dries up because of climate change, or some one has decided to build a canal or hydro plant and diverted the river? People will still come back to you and say “hey, what now? You gave us the fishing skill but that doesn't work anymore. What are you going to now give us?” The problem with the well-known saying is dependency remains at the core of the idea, albeit at a more helpful level than total dependency.
Human Rights
At the centre of the international development is the Human Rights agenda. What does it mean for any person born into the world to be truly human? The Universal Declaration of Human Rights outlined what are the necessary mindsets and activities to ensure that humans become human.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Thinkers such as Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen have translated these a little further into what does it mean for humans to flourish - a community where people are well nourished, free from avoidable morbidity, they live long, they take part in the life of the community, they appear in public without shame, they find worthwhile jobs, they keep themselves warm, they use their school education and they visit friends and relations if they choose. The key for Sen is the word “choose”. Flourishing people and communities have choice or “capability’. They are able to make certain choices. The issue of a community and the individuals in it having the choices and the capability to exercise those choices, sits at the heart of Oxfam’s definition of poverty.
“Poverty is more than an issue of money….it is a ‘state of relative powerlessness in which people are denied the ability to control crucial aspects of their lives’
The Human Rights agenda is focused around restoring the core of our humanity – the agency, the choice, the capability to flourish.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)
How do we create the conditions, the processes and the activities in the world, to make the Human Rights agenda a reality for all, in a sustainable way? The answer is the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s). Focused on 2030, the SDG’s aim to be the agreed pathway for all nations to deliver human rights to all within a sustainable framework for people, planet and prosperity (the Latin root of the word means towards hope, not consumerism). The pathway is created through 17 high-level goals built around 169 specific targets.
Youth – The activists & the beneficiaries
There are 1.8 billion young people in the world between the ages of 10 – 24 years old. 90% of them live in the least developed countries. They are inheriting an unsustainable world that is challenged by the need to bring human rights to all. Half of the world population is under 30. 75 million of them are unemployed.
The challenge to every sector of society, government, business or community is whether young people will be equipped to be part of the solution to the challenges of delivering the Human Rights agenda, through delivering the SDG’s? This means more than them being beneficiaries of the SDG’s, rather, that they are the activists delivering the SDG agenda. If they are not part of the growing global solution then they will remain part of the global problem.
Young people must be at the centre of the post-2015 vision for sustainable development to drive the future we want. Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive Director UNFPA
This is the mission of Emerging Leaders. To deliver the Human Rights agenda, through the strategy of the SDG’s, by empowering productive youth citizens in the worlds most vulnerable communities.
Emerging Leaders programmes are a journey of transformation, based on mind set change. Why mindset change? Human Rights cannot be recovered where people are not liberated to become agents of creating their own flourishing life story. Without mindset change the story stays as it currently is. With mindset change we see the following outcomes for youth:
They see their potential
They can see what thinking has kept them small
They have their life’s pen
They understand that their life exists for the benefit of others
They can see the importance of their character
They know the story they want to write
They know how to write that story
They know how to lead others to write a shared story
They know how to lead their money
They know how to lead a project
They are proactive
They are developing into problem solvers
They are developing into long term thinkers
They are developing the ability to see and take responsibility
They are learning to change what isn't working
They are developing focus
They are developing positive attitudes
They feel, see and think like a leader
They are developing an inter-dependent attitude
The doorways to change
There are three doorways that we can enter in order to drive this sustainable change agenda.
The first is Business & Global Supply Chains.
The second is Government and its ‘arms’ of security, governance, education and health
The third is International NGO’s
This document focuses on the first of these three.
Business & Global Supply Chains
One way of looking at the opportunity that businesses and the global supply chain have to dramatically further the Human Rights agenda is in terms of Levels.
Level 1 – these are the people that the business and supply chains employ in their factories, farms and pack houses. This is the Level that might be represented above the water line of an iceberg. It is more visible to external accountability than the other Levels. The abuses here are often around gender violence and inequality, power abuses, and economic deprivation. As Paulo Freire study[1] shows that the majority of the oppressed become oppressors in this context.
Level 2 – these are the businesses that supply the Tier 1 companies. The level of human rights abuse at this level is severe including higher prevalence of such exploitation as child labour.
Level 3 – these are the often very informal businesses that supply the suppliers. The most extreme, hidden and worst forms of human rights abuse can be found here in bonded labour, sexual exploitation and human trafficking. This is the dark underbelly of the iceberg.
The more informal, ‘off the book’, hidden the work, the more opportunity for debt, violence, trafficking and the multiple symptoms of poverty can be seen
If business and global supply chains can be sources of such human right abuses, they can also become one of the major channels to bringing the answers to human right abuses at ALL the Levels. By investing in the management, the workers, the supply chain communities and the youth of those communities, business is providing a deeply embedded solution to a large segment of human rights abuses.
A model of business driven, community transformation
What have Emerging Leaders learned in the past 10 years about how to make an integrated, holistic intervention through the business into their local communities, in a way that benefits the business and yet makes the community safer (the basis of all poverty reduction), increases local GDP and community well-being. Following the model above, where the initiative is driven from local business we see six steps in an integrated investment into building flourish communities.
Step 1a
Emerging Leaders introduces Leadership for Life to the Managers, Supervisors and workforce of the sponsoring business.
This has a clear impact on the business[2]
Step 1b
The result of Leadership for Life is every person running a project that benefits the community
Step 1c
The business sponsors a Leadership for Life programme in the community for workforce friends and family
Step 2
The business hosts a multi-agency (police, health, education, youth, local government, environment etc) event to envision for community transformation.
Step 3
Emerging Leaders runs a Leadership for Life programme for potential trainers from the multi-agencies working within the community
Step 4
Potential trainers from multi agencies and the sponsoring business attend an integrated TTT (Lead Now & Leadership for Life)
Step 5
Trained trainers now deliver to the capacity of the various multi agency groups and to the sponsoring business workforce
Step 6
Supporting the trained trainers to continue to deliver
The benefit to the business is that it is investing in the security of its business as well as investing in the leadership potential of every new staff member it employs from the local community.
The benefits to the local community are seen in terms of security, economic empowerment and community transformation, thus reducing the Human Rights abuses that occur in Tiers 2 and 3.
It is in this way that Emerging Leaders strategy is to partner with Business and Global Supply chains as a vital door way to drive the Human Rights agenda, through the strategy of the SDG’s, by empowering productive youth citizens in the worlds most vulnerable communities by investing in every Level that the business occupies within the community.
Measuring Impact
Community transformation can be measured against the 3 core metrics of flourishing communities and individuals (ref: Sen; Nussbaum)
Community Security
Community GDP/Livelihoods
Community Well-being
trevor@emerging-leaders.net
[1] Pedagogy Of The Oppressed Paulo Freire 1996
[2] See Emerging Leaders business impact data