ACN worked successfully with the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (RWI) on human rights training for corporates in Southeast Asia. RWI has been running similar programmes for members of the judiciary and staff of national human rights institutes (NHRIs), but this is the first time it has been extended to include corporations.

On 12-16 July 2017, around 50 participants from the judiciary, NHRIs and businesses spent a week in Bangkok; learning from roleplays, discussions and classroom lectures.

Most recently, a smaller 3-day session in Singapore attended only by corporate representatives was conducted on 13-5 September 2017. The main theme of the course is human rights, gender equality and environment in the Agenda 2030 framework.

In Singapore, Prof. Radu Mares from Lund University in Sweden covered in-depth the whys and hows of business and human rights. Topics included: international instruments for the protection of human rights, focusing on the UN Guiding Principles Reporting Framework. In between, learning was also supplemented with an online programme developed by RWI.

ACN’s CEO Mr. Thomas Thomas led the final day of the session in Singapore, sharing some information about the situation of business and human rights in ASEAN.

The course aims to strengthen capacities among and between key actors to address related challenges in Southeast Asia from their different roles and perspectives. ACN will continue to work with RWI to lead private sector engagement.