III Annual Conference of the NOVA BHRE
Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence: From Law to Practice
26 September 2023
Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Zona de Congressos, Auditórium 3
The corporate responsibility to respect human rights has become a global norm reflecting social expectations for all companies wherever they operate since the unanimous endorsement of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) by the Human Rights Council in 2011.
The UNGPs clarify that, in order to meet that responsibility, companies are expected to exercise human rights due diligence. In other words, companies should have processes in place in order to identify and address the actual and potential adverse human rights impacts with which they may be or become involved. The concept of human rights due diligence has since been extended to other fields such as the environment and climate change and become the cornerstone of responsible and sustainable business conduct.
A growing number of States have adopted or are in the process of adopting mandatory human rights due diligence legislation, whilst at the EU level, the Draft Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive is being discussed. Against the backdrop of these developments, one of the main challenges remains how to translate these requirements into practice.
The aim of this conference is to bridge the gap between law and practice and explore the implications of corporate due diligence in the management of global value chains, the role of technology in that respect, the requirements in relation to responsible disengagement and the measures needed to ensure access to remedy when harm does occur.
This conference is organised in collaboration with NOVA SBE and the NOVA Green Lab with the support of PLMJ, the Portuguese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, CEDIS, FCT, the Embassy of Canada to Portugal and the ERA Chair in Social Innovation.
Programme
