STRENGTHENING HUMAN RIGHTS PROGRAMMES THROUGH ENGAGEMENT AND TRANSPARENCY
The European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) is now in force, and many compliance teams have a new task on their hands: building a legally compliant human rights programme. There is plenty of guidance on how to prioritise human rights issues, structure a risk assessment and embed due diligence into existing processes. It is important guidance and companies should dig into it.
However, the two areas that are often overlooked but provide immense value to companies are stakeholder engagement and transparency. They are often overlooked because they usually attract sceptical pushback from internal colleagues. That pushback is well-intentioned but often suffers from a misunderstanding of the purpose and value of stakeholder engagement and transparency.
Stakeholder engagement: risk intelligence IRL
Corporate human rights programmes are rarely credible if built entirely from behind a desk. The people closest to the impacts – workers, communities, civil society organisations and trade unions – hold intelligence that consulting reports and desktop risk assessments cannot replicate.
Stakeholders often know where the risks are before they become impacts. Human rights risks are context-specific and often invisible from headquarters. The people living closest to those risks can provide insight that data or desk-based research cannot. It is well worth the time and resources to get out to meet them and understand their views.
Avoiding meaningful stakeholder engagement is where many companies miss a critical opportunity to strengthen human rights risk management and credibility. Legal teams may be concerned about creating litigation risk or making admissions.
Jul-Sep 2026 Issue
Novartis