Corporate Accountability
BHRE Center works to close the governance gaps but also combat harmful corporate policies and practices that allow companies to cause harm and avoid responsibility for human rights abuses across their business operations and/or supply chains. Our priority areas include supporting affected rights-holders in the event that they wish to pursue accountability of multinational corporations operating in prevalent rights abuses spheres such as workers rights in the garment industry. We also tackle the under-addressed issue of the monitoring and collection of user data by service providers and other technology companies which heavily infringe on Cambodian people’s right to privacy.
BHRE Center works to dismantle corporate narratives that are used to shift responsibility and to address the clear absence of accessible and robust non-judicial grievance mechanism for workers. To do this, BHRE Center engages with companies to reinforce the principle that participation in established initiatives does not absolve companies of their role in strengthening and updating their internal policies to uphold their human rights obligations in accordance with international best standards. In the garment sector, for example, global brands and factory managers frequently point to their support for, or participation in, Better Factories Cambodia (BFC) as their primary contribution to improving labour conditions. While such initiatives have played an important historical role in improving conditions for workers, they are in the Cambodian context today often treated as a substitute for alternative policies, increasingly aligned with international best standards, implicitly justifying the failure of companies to take further measures to address labour rights issues. BHRE challenges this by documenting abuses through monitoring and reporting. This exposes gaps between corporate narratives, commitments and actual practice.
Where appropriate, we use this evidence to engage international complaints mechanisms and other actors with leverage over rights-abusing companies, ensuring that responsibility is linked back to corporate decision-makers in an environment where violations may otherwise be invisible due to systematic power imbalances and that accountability is strengthened including rights-holders obtaining adequate remedy.