Biz Human Rights Updates: 12 June – 25 June

Updates:

The International Labour Conference has adopted Convention 193 on Decent Work in the Platform Economy.

The Convention was adopted by the Members of the International Labour Organization and establishes protections for more than 150 million workers earning their living through digital labour platforms. It mandates Member States to implement protections against violence and harassment, for the rights of platform workers, for the right to freedom of association and collective bargaining, for the correct classification of workers’ status in employment (based on the type of work and not the contract), for renumeration, against unlawful suspension, and for occupational health and safety, among others. Future work on the Convention will include recommendations as a non-binding instrument that would detail guidance of the Convention’s implementation. 

The Convention is a landmark step as it is the first time platform workers’ rights are explicitly protected through a Convention. Crucially, the Convention also extends rights to employees outside of an employment relationship including fair renumeration for these workers. Trade unions and civil society have hailed this as a historic step and tool against exploitation of platform workers. 

The International Labour Conference also adopted the agenda Resolution and Conclusions on gender equality at work, reaffirming that it is essential to decent work and social justice. Among others, the Conclusions call for action on helping women to access good jobs, strengthen case services and social protection and ensure that everyone benefits equally in the labour market. 

Notes/Further Reading:

An investigation by Global Witness shows that much of conflict-affected coltan from the Democratic Republic of the Congo finds its ways into international supply chains. 

Over a year-long investigation, the team shows that coltan is produced in mines in Rubaya owned by the M23 rebels who are responsible for thousands of civilians and the displacement of hundreds of thousands, and are accused of abducting, torturing, and committing sexual violence against the population. The coltan is then smuggled to Rwanda from where it is exported by seven different companies – five of which have been found to buy conflict coltan from the DRC. 

The report further found that traceability systems and assurance audits implemented to prevent the buying of conflict minerals and fuelling of conflict in the Great Lakes Region has failed to detect the smuggled coltan. Global Witness calls on corporate actors to employ heightened HRDD alongside the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Minerals from CAHRAs and to MSIs to thoroughly scrutinise members buying coltan from Rwanda, among other recommendations.

A new report by ActionAid Netherlands, Milieudefensie and Profundo is highlighting the involvement of Dutch companies and development banks in human rights, social and environmental abuses in transition mineral supply chains. 

The assessment found that Dutch companies and development banks are linked to global mineral supply chains through financial flows and upstream business partners. Investigating 4 projects across Argentina, Indonesia, Brazil and South Africa, the research reveals links between the analysed companies and adverse impacts on communities and the environment attributed to the operations. 

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Deforestation Legislation

Updates:

The UK government has announced it would step up its actions to tackle illegal deforestation. 

The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs announced that it would introduce new rules to ensure that everyday products sold in the UK would not contribute to illegal deforestation. It will do so using the Environment Act which was passed in 2021 but never fully implemented and the existing UK Timber Regulation. The government plans to align the legislation with the scope of the EU Deforestation Regulation to maintain Northern Ireland’s dual market access to the UK Internal Market and the EU Single Market. 

The announcement comes after a Nature Security Assessment, conducted earlier this year, showed that global ecosystem degradation and collapse threaten UK national security and prosperity, for instance, through affected global food production. Civil society organisations, represented among others in the NGO Forest Coalition, have welcomed the announcement saying that it represents an important first step in preventing imports linked to deforestation. The government will hold a public consultation on the mandatory due diligence aspects of the law and has lowered the threshold for companies included from £50 million to those with £1 million annual turnover. 

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Forced Labour Legislation 

Updates:

US Customs and Border Protection has published a new operational concerning forced labour for importers.

The guidance details all legislative instruments and enforcement processes that are aimed at preventing the import of goods made with forced labour into the Unites States. Across the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) and the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), the CBP employs rebuttable presumptions of goods being made with forced labour and all three forced labour-related regimes employ investigations (directly or indirectly) as the central tool for companies to prove their supply chains are free from forced labour. 

The CBP clarifies the need for complying with its evidentiary standards and highlights differences that apply depending on the applied legal regime, for instance the time frames within which evidence must be presented which varies between the WROs and the UFLPA. While the effectiveness of the UFLPA in particular has been evident, there is growing criticism that the CBP is slowing down its enforcement with the UFLPA Enforcement Statistics Dashboard showing a decline in the agency’s activities. 

Canada is proposing new legislation to strengthen the current regime to ban imported goods made with forced labour. 

The country had introduced prohibitions under the Customs Tariff with the current framework relying on a risk-based approach to identify shipments of goods made with forced labour. The previous regime had been subject to criticism over its low number of shipments detained (50 until June 2025) and been subject to the probe by office of the US Trade Representative which equally concluded that the framework was ineffective. The government denies that the proposed legislation is a response to the threat of tariffs by the US. 

The proposed legislation would replace the Customs Tariff and introduce stronger restrictions. The law would give the Minister of Foreign Affairs authority to identify high-risk regions concerning which importers would need to provide enhanced supply chain tracing information to Competent Authorities. The failure to do so would lead to a prohibition of imports into Canada. Subsequently to the draft publishing the government will now hold public consultations with stakeholders.

In Brazil,a new draft on import bans of products made with forced labour is also currently discussed. 

The new draft is an amendment to Bill 2799/15 which was introduced in 2015 and originally focussed on combatting forced labour in the cocoa and coffee sectors. Under the proposed law, the scope would be widened to products of all sectors that are imported to the country. As opposed to existing legislation in other countries, an import ban would only come into effect when there is a judicial confirmation of forced labour taking place and when the information on due diligence to identify and prevent forced labour that companies are required to submit is insufficient.