9 February 2024. WBI’s Director Dr Bonny Ling is back teaching a new class of students from academia and industry on Business and Human Rights [供應鏈企業責任與國際人權]” with Professor Yu-Fan Chiu at prominent university in Taiwan.
The postgraduate course “Corporate Responsibility and International Human Rights in Supply Chains” at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University will start in mid-February, welcoming a new class of students from academia and industry.
In its second run, the course is part of the accelerating momentum to bring Taiwan’s legal framework more in line with international standards on business and human rights. We recently launched the Taiwan Project for Business and Human Rights, which stems from the collaboration between Dr Ling and Professor Chiu teaching this course.
Global regulatory shifts, including the EU Directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence, are increasingly requiring governments and enterprises to implement better labour practices.
This postgraduate course and the Taiwan Project collectively aim to build capacity for business and human rights in Taiwan’s fast-developing corporate landscape.
While Taiwan’s National Action Plan for Business and Human Rights (NAP) was a welcome first step for promoting awareness on business and human rights, the Plan needs to move beyond corporate philanthropy if Taiwan wants to remain a viable economic partner globally.
Dr Ling explains further in this insightful article:
“As it stands, by focusing almost exclusively on state duty under Pillar 1, the plan does not assess the extent that Taiwanese businesses have engaged with and implemented human rights due diligence (Pillar 2). It also does not speak on how businesses can provide effective remedy for their negative human rights impacts (Pillar 3).”
A powerful and effective way of building human capacity long term on business and human rights is through education. The course will cover:
- Corporate responsibility to respect human rights
- UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights’s “Respect, Protect and Remedy Framework”
- Supply chain and ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work
- Corporate accountability and access to remedy
- Resource exploitation and forced labour
- Elimination of forced labour and gaps between international standards and Taiwan
- Human rights due diligence: Developments in Europe and Asia
- Sustainability and corporate responsibility
- Sports and human rights
- Conflict minerals and responsible technology value chain
- Multistakeholder engagement.
We are excited to welcome the next generation of human rights and business practitioners in class later this month and continue to build the momentum for a responsible economy!
