hardscapeIn September 2013 the UK launched it’s action plan on business and human rights becoming the first EU country to set out guidance to companies on integrating human rights into their operations. Parliament will be reviewing potential legislation during the 2017-19 period.

On Tuesday 2nd June 2015, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and Central Procurement Department of the Government in Northern Ireland hosted an inaugural meeting based on the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights (UNGP), and how it will impact on business supply chains as the principles are implemented into existing or new corporate law or responsibility planning a programme for the forum on-going.

Hardscape’s Ethical Trade (ET) programme is headed up by our Glenn Bradley who is an ET Pioneer & Trainer and the Company was invited to present an overview on the UN framework providing ground truth examples of how Hardscape have moved beyond paper CSR to pro-actively work to protect, respect & remedy human and labour rights abuse of workers in their supply chain.

Hardscape have a policy commitment to the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights and perform human rights diligence across our entire supply chain through active programmes of assessing, integrating, tracking, training and communicating with our stakeholders to remedy any abuse via legitimate, transparent end to end agreements.

In todays world where cheap products potentially means slave, bonded and child labour (or many other labour or human rights abuse) are prevalent in the supply chain, we call on others to also assure that corporate purchasing is caveat to a business that can evidence they are working to the UNGP and / or achieving within organisations such as the Ethical Trading Initiative.