“How (not) to do Business & Human Rights in Central & Eastern Europe and Central Asia” – a collection of 15 case studies from 8 countries in the region (Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, North Macedonia, Poland and Ukraine) is now available in English, as well as Polish, Ukrainian & Russian.
There is a high demand for concise and well edited human rights related information from the region – mostly for self-learning or teaching purposes. It needs to be noted, however, that the cases gathered into this collection are not academic papers. Instead, they are to drive thinking beyond academic discussions into what needs to be done by companies to address their adverse human rights impacts. They have been developed by the participants of the first edition of the Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia Summer Academy on Business and Human Rights that took place in September 2022. The cases are based on publicly available information concerning real, adverse human rights impacts of companies operating in those regions. Despite the numerous differences between them, all the countries are affected by their post-Soviet legacy and share challenges linked to a weak rule of law and ineffective state institutions. This inevitably leads to poor human rights enforcement with, as we can see from the case studies, labour and environmental protection being subjects of particular concern.
While the answers provided in the publication are not comprehensive, we hope they will inspire discussion about what the application of HRDD could look like in such a context and provide some guidance in the right direction.
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