A social sustainability consultancy which specialises in human rights has launched in Singapore.
Referred to as Truthful Future SG, the corporate is based by former lawyer Natasha Latiff, beforehand technical advisor to the Afghanistan authorities on ladies’s affairs.
Truthful Future SG launches to assist corporations in Asia Pacific treatment human rights violations of their provide chains, and offers social auditing, coaching, grievance remediation and coverage advisory.
Whereas regulatory and shopper stress is rising on corporations to reply to human rights dangers, companies usually strategy social sustainability reporting as a “box-ticking train” and their programs lack enforcement mechanisms to stop and treatment abuse, Latiff famous.
Natasha Latiff says that corporations fear that in the event that they do their due diligence correctly they may turn into legally uncovered, which is why they are usually defensive and reactive to human rights points. Picture: LinkedIn
“Firms fear that in the event that they do their due diligence correctly they may uncover issues that expose them legally, which is why corporations are usually defensive and reactive [to human rights issues],” she mentioned, including that human rights experience is “very low” in Asia’s company sector.
Asia has the highest variety of folks working in pressured labour, with some 9.5 million pressured labourers within the area, in keeping with the World Labour Organisation. Latiff famous that companies are inclined to do the naked minimal to deal with human rights points and battle to establish weaknesses of their provide chains.
Highlighting the collapse of the Rana Plaza textiles manufacturing facility in Bangladesh in 2017, Latiff mentioned {that a} social audit had been executed just a few months prior to the calamity that didn’t expose human rights vulnerabilities, and kids have been discovered within the rubble.
“My job is to encourage corporations to transcend compliance and take an strategy centred on human improvement,” she instructed Eco-Enterprise.
A method of doing so is to contain staff within the design of company human rights methods, to know their wants and establish the place vulnerabilities exist, she mentioned.
Firms ought to strategy human rights not from a place of worry however of “curiosity”, discover the place their social impacts are, and set up a dialogue with affected communities to make sure that violations are usually not repeated, she mentioned.
Grievance mechanisms must be in place which are designed to guard the identities of whistleblowers who may worry dropping their jobs in the event that they complain, Latiff added.
She cited a research by KPMG that discovered that two-thirds of buyers would pay a premium for corporations that align with environmental, social and governance due diligence requirements.
“It’s vital for corporations to recognise that there are advantages to be gained from stronger human rights insurance policies. They don’t must be afraid, they should really feel supported. That method they’re more likely to transfer forward with progressive practices as a substitute of getting defensive,” she mentioned.
Latiff has 20 years expertise in human rights advocacy. She additionally runs the United States-based non-profit Strategic Advocacy for Human Rights, which sources ladies civil society leaders within the International South with the talents to push for change round gender-based violence.
Her consultancy launches the month after a research by Worldwide Labour Organisation discovered that US$236 billion of company earnings have been generated from pressured labour in 2021.
