scholarly journals Human Rights Anchored in Business: Practice and Challenges in the Palm Oil Sector in Malaysia

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Andika AB. Wahab
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Corporate Culture ◽  
Palm Oil ◽  
Business Practice ◽  
Oil Companies ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Oil Sector ◽  
Sustainability Standards ◽  
Direct Market ◽  
Market Pressure

The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights aims to address gaps in human rights governance by setting a standard and corporate culture of respecting human rights. In Malaysia, despite growing requirements for sustainable production, the palm oil sector has been implicated in various corporate human rights violations. This article discusses how do three public listed companies in the palm oil sector in Malaysia perform their obligation to respect human rights? This article argues that while large palm oil companies have shown modest progress in realizing their human rights obligation – the lack of regulatory framework, resources, direct market pressure and membership to sustainability standards continue to serve as critical challenges in compensating the gaps in human rights governance.

scholarly journals Business and Human Rights in ASEAN: Lessons from the Palm Oil Sector in Malaysia

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Andika AB. Wahab
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Corporate Culture ◽  
Palm Oil ◽  
Action Plan ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
Member States ◽  
Oil Companies ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Asean Member ◽  
Guiding Principles

The release of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in 2011 aims to address gaps in human rights governance by setting a standard and corporate culture of respecting human rights. As part of the state responsibility to implement these guiding principles, some member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have already embarked preliminary steps towards establishing their respective National Action Plan on Business and Human rights (NAPBHR), while others are still lag behind. This article describes current development on business and human rights in the region. Drawing from the palm oil sector’s experience in Malaysia, this study aims to provide lessons for ASEAN member states to contemplate when developing their NAPBHR. In this article, I argue that while some large palm oil companies have shown modest progress in realizing their human rights obligation, challenges emerge in many forms including the lack of leadership, collaboration and ambition to steer and scale up industry transformation on human rights across supply chain. Equally important, challenges around certification scheme depict that it is not the only solution in persuading respect to human rights. Meaningful values transfer often overlooked in certification practice resulting in typical "ticking the audit box" exercise without understanding principles behind it. As such, the development of NAPBHR among the ASEAN member states should reflect on these reality and challenges.

Business and Human Rights: Alternative Approaches to Transnational Regulation

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Surya Deva
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Corporate Culture ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Polycentric Governance ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Treaty Reform ◽  
And Control ◽  
Investment Agreements

In recent years, various approaches to transnational regulation of business conduct have evolved as an alternative to the command-and-control model focusing on conduct of domestic businesses and the soft law approach of international human rights law to regulate corporations. On reviewing the potential of five such approaches (i.e., polycentric governance, extraterritorial regulation, proposed international treaty, reform of corporate laws, and rebalancing of trade-investment agreements), this article makes two arguments. First, although polycentric governance is critical to fill regulatory deficits of state-based regulation, this approach should not ignore or weaken further the role and relevance of states in regulating businesses, given the dynamic relation between state-based and other regulatory approaches. Second, greater attention should be paid to nonhuman rights regulatory regimes to change the corporate culture, which tends to externalize human rights issues. The increasing focus on the role of corporate laws and trade-investment agreements should be seen in this context. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Volume 17 is October 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

scholarly journals Implementing Ethical Recruitment of Migrant Workers: Evidence from the Palm Oil Sector in Malaysia

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-42
Author(s):  
Andika Wahab
Keyword(s):  
Palm Oil ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Value Chain ◽  
Due Diligence ◽  
Oil Companies ◽  
Recruitment Practices ◽  
Unethical Practices ◽  
Oil Sector ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Migration Industry

Growing allegation of irregularities in the conduct of migrant workers’ recruitment drives global effort to eliminate unethical practices in the migration industry. As part of the international value chain, palm oil companies in Malaysia are expected to implement ethical recruitment practices. This study is an attempt to assess the employers’ commitment and practices in implementing ethical recruitment in Malaysia. Deriving from four palm oil mills (employers) and further validated through a survey conducted against 92 Nepalese workers – this study argues that while employers have committed to cover certain costs of their migrant workers’ recruitment, they lack a clear policy commitment, due diligence and monitoring against the labour recruiters. Consequently, the labour recruiters (including the intermediaries) mainly in Nepal have imposed another set of recruitment costs which already covered by the employers in Malaysia. Alarmingly, the Nepalese workers have paid even a higher cost of recruitment than the cost borne by the employers. For ethical recruitment to be effectively implemented, the employers’ monetary commitment to cover the cost of their workers’ recruitment must be complemented with efforts to engage and monitor the conduct of the labour recruiters in migrant workers’ origin country.

scholarly journals Respecting Human Rights in Conflict Regions: How to Avoid the ‘Conflict Spiral’

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas GRAF ◽  
Andrea IFF
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Working Group ◽  
Business Practice ◽  
Conflict Analysis ◽  
Business Practices ◽  
Due Diligence ◽  
Established Method ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Due Diligence

AbstractThis article introduces a novel way in which human rights due diligence can be ‘enhanced’ to respond to business and human rights challenges specific to conflict affected areas. It makes two key arguments. First, it claims that a crucial and often neglected factor for understanding human rights risks in conflict affected areas is that businesses face escalating and largely unpredictable human rights risks once they become involved in conflict. Second, the article shows how integrating aspects of the well-established method of conflict sensitive business practice into human rights due diligence can help companies address this challenge. For instance, companies should include a conflict analysis in human rights impact assessments and systematically identify and address their actual or potential impacts on conflict. This article provides support to a UN Working Group proposal for the integration of conflict sensitive business practices into human rights due diligence.

scholarly journals Sustainable Production Policy Impact on Palm Oil Firms’ Performance: Empirical Analysis from Indonesia

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (20) ◽  
pp. 8750
Author(s):  
Noxolo Kunene ◽  
Yessica C.Y. Chung
Keyword(s):  
Palm Oil ◽  
Forest Degradation ◽  
Sustainable Production ◽  
Difference In Differences ◽  
Production Policy ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Oil Sector ◽  
The Government ◽  
Sustainability Standards ◽  
The Impact

Sustainable production is a key element of sustainable development. The concept was first introduced in the United Nations Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and has become an important item on the management of industries. In conjunction, the government of Indonesia introduced the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) policy in 2011 to adhere to international sustainability standards of Sustainable Palm Oil and of reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+). This study investigates the impact of ISPO policy on palm oil firms’ performance. Using a sample of 409 palm oil firms of the Indonesian palm oil sector for the years 2010 and 2015, we employed a regression discontinuity (RD) with a difference-in-differences approach to explore the effect of the policy on firms’ performance. The RD results show that the introduction of the policy significantly reduced large firms’ profit by IDR 75m (equivalent to USD 5250); the negative effect of the policy increased with firm size. Furthermore, there was a significant reduction in performance for firms that promptly purchased land before the policy’s ban on land expansion. These findings suggest that a punitive sustainable production policy does not sustain the palm oil sector. Nevertheless, large companies that complied with international sustainability measures ahead of the introduction of the domestic policy benefited.

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