28 February 2024. Work Better Innovations, under a special collaboration with Taiwan’s National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, School of Law, the “Taiwan Project for Business and Human Rights,” releases Policy Brief on the current state of the corporate responsibility to respect human rights in Taiwan. This is the first report of the Taiwan Project.
Titled “Operationalising Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human Rights in Taiwan: Current State and Challenges,” this research was authored by Wen-chi Chang and Dr. Bonny Ling. With collaboration from Professor Yu-Fan Chiu, this policy brief provides an assessment on the current state of implementation of corporate responsibility to respect human rights of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs).
The UNGPs is a globally agreed standard to prevent and address the risk of negative human rights impacts in a business context. This Policy Brief addresses the corporate responsibility to respect human rights — second pillar of the UNGPs — and assesses the current state of its implementation among a study group of Taiwanese businesses.
The Brief examines how widely Taiwanese business enterprises accept their corporate responsibility to respect human rights in company policies and processes; and found the current state-of-play of adherence to Pillar II under the UNGP framework in Taiwan provides early encouraging results:
- The majority of enterprises we studied have publicly disclosed their commitments to human rights.
- Nearly half have issued human rights due diligence policies.
- All the enterprises without a dedicated and publicly disclosed policy on human rights due diligence had a form of ESG risk management and reporting.
Our research found that the corporate responsibility to respect human rights among the study group of Taiwanese enterprises tended to scale down with the size of the enterprise operation and also that remedial measures need stronger uptake by enterprises, mirroring developments abroad. We observed more alignment with international expectations under the UNGPs among the large-scale enterprises.
“We are absolutely thrilled to see the culmination of many months of research, working closely between researchers in Taiwan and abroad, to build on accurate knowledge and a keen understanding of the international context for business and human rights in Taiwan.”
– Dr. Bonny Ling
We make use of a subset of business enterprises in Taiwan that have been independently evaluated and recognised in 2023 for their corporate sustainability by the “CommonWealth Sustainability Citizenship Award,” a special recognition in Taiwan, whose aim is to promote corporate uptake of socially responsible practices.
This research was conducted in Chinese. The primary materials we gathered for the analysis are listed below. We are deeply grateful to the funder and the many individuals whose work brought this research to print.
We will be releasing additional research reports in the coming weeks, in preparation for the first Taiwan Business Forum for Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence, in Taipei on 9 April 2024! Registration will open shortly.
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