Background

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Our session offers a dynamic, participatory space to explore how human rights protections can evolve under crisis conditions, particularly in business and supply chain contexts. Anchored in factory-level insights and real-world challenges, the session examines how shifting legal and policy landscapes—such as mandatory Human Rights Due Diligence (mHRDD) can better uphold worker rights, especially for those most at risk.

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At the heart of this session lies access to effective remedy and prevention and mitigation of human rights violations through dialogue during times of crisis including addressing issues like workers facing layoffs, insurance gaps, wage insecurity, increased risk of discriminatory practices. In the context of furniture factories; WE Program, together with its brand partner Tchibo will introduce its innovative dialogue approach that left no one behind during the -post pandemic- economic crisis in VietNam. Through dialogue, most impacted groups were protected and workers most urgent needs were addressed. Learnings of these experiences inspired and gave rise to a regional perspective including WE teams in China and Cambodia and VietNam. 

 

The session aims to redefine the word “Crisis” from workers’ perspectives and bring real-life stories to explore together with participants what “including rightholders voices through dialogue” look like at factory floor.

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Key Objectives

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• Participants are able to humanize HRDD and co-create recommendations to align policy tools with on-the-ground needs 

• Participants develop a shared understanding of how crisis response can be both rights-based and worker-informed 

• Participants gain insights from WE’s participatory dialogue model for embedding the voices of the most impacted stakeholders into BHR decision-making

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Guiding Questions

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• How can HRDD expectations can be more informed and grounded through involving rightholders perspective and factory-level operational realities?

• What does effective remedy look like if rightholders voices are put at the center to shape companies approaches and their followed actions?

• How can dialogue help in engaging suppliers to cocreate for betterment of working conditions even in crisis situations when leverage is very limited?

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Format

• Workshop

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Session Partners