HRDD Webinar – New Challenges for the Supply Chain

HRDD are mandatory human rights due diligence that are now becoming relevant for business partners around the world.

The UN Guiding Principles form the basis for the National Action Plans (NAPs) for business and human rights. At the international level, a total of 27 countries have currently adopted NAPs, 19 of which are European, including 16 EU member states.

Germany has also moved toward binding legislation on human rights due diligence. The “Act on Corporate Due Diligence in Supply Chains” was adopted on June 11, 2021 and will come into force in 2023.

In order to achieve human rights due diligence certification, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) must quickly adapt to the new rules and regulations that will be required of international suppliers starting in 2023. For this urgent reason, the HRDD webinar was created.  

 

About the HRDD Webinar:

The online training on European HRDD legislation on global supply and value chains is a free event launched on March 14, 2022. The webinar is organized by Business Scouts for Development, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, GIZ, SIBE, Germany Africa Business Network, and edubiz. It is offered to SMEs with the aim of promoting international trade.

Target groups in the five countries Bangladesh, Cameroon, Cambodia, Ethiopia and Tanzania are suppliers of internationally operating brands, local business associations and chambers as well as sourcing companies with local subsidiaries.  

 

Structure of the webinar:

For the countries Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Tanzania, five webinar sessions were held in March and April, where different speakers provided information on the broad spectrum of HRDD topics.

The major topics of the five sessions were: ‘Sustainability in supply chain’ with Prof. Dr. Peter Franke, ‘New challenges in global supply chains’ also with Prof. Dr. Peter Franke, ‘Human rights and global supply chain’ with Dr. Phillipp Ehring, ‘Supplier audits under the aspect of human rights’ with Wilfried Krokowski and ‘Local needs to follow the human rights aspects in global supply chain’ with Franck Jiongo.

During all events, participants had the opportunity to ask questions to the business scouts and speakers. The fifth session in particular ensured an open conversation between the participants and the speakers with a detailed Q&A session.

In contrast to the country webinars mentioned above, the first session for Cambodia was subject to a different structure. In this session, the speakers Prof. Dr. Peter Franke, Wilfried Krokowski, Dr. Phillipp Ehring and Luisa Gentile each gave a short presentation to the approximately 40 Cambodian participants. Two more events are planned as roundtables in April and May.

The events for Cameroon are yet to come and should be executed as hybrid events in June.  

 

About the events: The aim of the events was on the one hand the transfer of knowledge of the complex topics, but also the creation of a platform of exchange. The participants were not only able to learn about the newly introduced rules of the HRDD, but it was also a valuable experience for the German referents to learn more about the situation of the respective countries and their company owners.

To learn more about the participants the speakers used an interactive presentation software. This survey tool was used during the sessions to encourage active participation.

The most important message that Mr. Wilfried Krokowski conveyed in his presentation was: “Start now and go step by step!” In order to prevent SMEs from being overwhelmed later when the new laws are implemented, they must start now to change the structure of their companies step by step.

 

Survey HRDD: Tanzania

Survey HRDD: Ethiopia

Find more information about the HRDD webinar event on https://hrdd.edubiz.org/

01.04.2022
von Editorial Team
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