Civil Society Dialogue on the Occasion of Second Annual UN Forum on Business and Human Rights
The International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR), the Center for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), the Business and Human Rights Resource Center, and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) are pleased to announce our collaboration in hosting the Civil Society Dialogue on the occasion of the Second Annual UN Forum on Business and Human Rights.
This Dialogue will occur on 2 December, 2013 in the United Nations Palais de Nations in Geneva from 15:00 to 18:00 CET.
The Dialogue is intended to provide an opportunity for civil society participants to identify key trends, needs and challenges for effective implementation of the UNGPs and advancement of respect for human rights in the context of business activities, and to identify strategies to harness and communicate civil society perspectives in the specific panels organized during the Second Annual Forum on Business and Human Rights.
Given the short time frame, participants will be asked to concentrate on the discussion questions provided instead of pursuing their own agendas. Display tables will be made available for organizations to distribute materials amongst the participants for work streams and efforts not covered in this Dialogue.
As part of their registration for this Dialogue, participants will have responded to a short survey seeking to capture trends, needs and challenges for the effective realization of the state duty to protect human rights and the corporate responsibility to respect human rights and effective access to remedy for victims. The results of these surveys will provide input in the most pressing implementation issues for civil society participants, and be used to kick-off and guide strategy discussion during the Forum Dialogue. This survey will also clarify which specific Forum panels each participant will attend, in the hopes of helping set shared strategy to ensure civil society perspectives are present and communicated in each panel of the Second Annual Forum.
The link to the survey is available here.
A link to the survey in Spanish is available here.
The survey will be open for submissions from 6 November, 2013 to 20 November, 2013.
Organizations and individuals unable to attend the Dialogue will be able to complete the online survey. All responses derived from the survey will be made anonymous when shared with the United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights in the hopes of communicating the trends, challenges and needs for effective realization of business respect for human rights from a civil society perspective in this Dialogue.
For more information, including the Dialogue background and methodology, please view the Concept Note below.