FRAME Workshop: Towards More Effective Engagement between the EU and Non-State Actors on Human Rights

On 3 July 2015 HRLC hosted a Workshop ‘Towards More Effective Engagement between the EU and Non-State Actors on Human Rights’, as part of the FRAME research project. Participants included representatives of international financial institutions (IFIs), civil society, human rights defenders and academia, who came together to discuss ways of improving engagement between the EU and non-state actors on human rights.

The Workshop was divided into three panels and concluded with a roundtable discussion. Each panel addressed a pressing issue arising from the research already carried out in the FRAME project:

• The first panel, entitled ‘Corporate social responsibility (CSR) Sprawl: Maintaining Control and Coherency over a Diverse Policy’, examined the critical issue of maintaining coherence and control within the EU’s corporate CSR policy.
• The second panel, was entitled ‘Bursting the Brussels Bubble – Diversifying EU Engagement with civil society organisations (CSOs) and human rights defenders (HRDs)’. On this panel, the participants discussed their experience of engaging with the EU and whether the EU would benefit from diversifying the range of CSOs it engages with both within and outside the EU. Panellists also examined the ways in which engagement can be diversified.
• The final panel was entitled ‘Overseeing Human Rights Compliance in Financing Arrangements: A Shared Burden?’. This panel looked at ways of sharing the burden of monitoring human rights compliance between different actors, sharing best practice between the IFIs, changes to project guidelines and building stronger relationships and communication channels with civil society.

The Workshop opened with a speech from Professor Jeff Kenner, FRAME Project Leader at the University of Nottingham, and a key note speech  from John Morrison, Executive Director of the Institute for Human Rights and Business. It concluded with a roundtable summing up the key themes of the Workshop.

More information and speeches can be found on the FRAME website.

FRAME is an ambitious 4-year multidisciplinary research project, involving a consortium of 19 internationally recognised and globally networked human rights institutes including the Human Rights Law Centre. It is funded by the European Union under its seventh framework programme (FP7) for research and technological development. The aim of the project is to foster human rights protection in the EU's internal and external policies. More details of the project, including completed research projects, are available at: http://www.fp7-frame.eu/