How Businesses Can Help Achieve the SDGs for Refugees
The SDGs were launched, to great fanfare, as a blueprint for achieving a better and more sustainable future for everyone. As states signed up to the Global Goals in 2015 they pledged to leave no-one behind and prioritise the fast-tracking of action for those with furthest to go. Yet four years on, research shows that […]
New Fund to Address Social Isolation Through Technology Closing Soon
Social isolation is a major public health concern, affecting people of many backgrounds, ages, locations and socio-economic circumstances. Research has shown that this issue can be linked to poor physical and mental health as well as potentially negative effects on communities. And those effects are felt most by those communities affected by additional challenges such […]
Eliminating Violence and Harassment Just Became an Obligation for Businesses Worldwide
On June 21, 2019, the International Labour Organization (ILO) voted overwhelmingly to adopt a Convention on the Elimination of Violence and Harassment in the World of Work. This represents an important step forward on strengthening protections for all workers around the world against violence and harassment. Business should see the adoption of the Convention as a […]
We Finally Have an Official Climate Emergency. But is that the full picture?
We are just midway through the year and yet 2019 has already seen several unprecedented weather events from Cyclone Fani, which evacuated more than a million people in India, to the two storms that devastated the Mozambican coast. These disasters have thrown into sharp focus just how much climate change is compounding our already complex […]
SURVEY: Advancing Gender Equality by Engaging Men as Allies Survey
How Can Business Advance Gender Equality Across the Value Chain by Engaging Men as Allies?
Men have a critical role to play in achieving gender equality. What is less clear is what this might mean in practice for organisations in their approach to advance gender equality. A new Business Fights Poverty Challenge will explore how businesses and organisations are advancing gender equality within their organizations and across the value chain […]
Not Just a Women’s Issue
What are some of the causes and consequences of violence against women? What role do men play? How can men unite to ensure the world is safer for everyone: women and girls, men and boys? In the inaugural presentation of the Clayman Institute’s 18-month symposium on breaking the culture of sexual assault, noted educator, author […]
Managing Human Rights Risks: Embracing a More Robust Approach to Human Rights Risks in Supply Chains
Oxfam will lead a panel at Business Fights Poverty Oxford 2019 on its supermarket campaign, Behind the Barcodes, giving a platform to two influential supermarkets as well as perspectives from consumers, investors and a multi-stakeholder initiative on ethical trade. The top six UK supermarkets have already responded to the campaign. As more consumers and investors […]
How Can Consumer Goods Companies Harness Technology to Most Effectively Tackle Modern Slavery in their Global Supply Chains?
According to the Global Slavery Index, 40.3 million people are in some form of modern slavery, including 24.9 million in forced labour. The ILO reports that US$150 billion of illegal profits are generated by forced labour each year. The issue has rapidly gained public and political attention in recent years. Legislation has strengthened companies’ formal […]
How Harnessing Technology is Modernising Informal Retail in Emerging Markets to Deliver Social Impact
More than 61% of the world’s employed population – two billion people – earn their livelihoods in the informal sector, with 93% of the world’s informal employment occurring in emerging and developing countries. 86% of employment in sub-Saharan Africa is informal and 80% of household retail is delivered via informal retailers. Yet informal retailers face […]
Business Fights Poverty Oxford 2019 Connection Zone Lunch: Transcending Conflict to Fight Poverty
“Seventy-three percent of people in the societies of the bottom billion have recently been through a civil war or are still in one,” said Professor Collier in The Bottom Billion. Conflict is “pretty distinctive,” he says, to the poorest countries on the planet. In these countries conflict tends to be a pattern, often prolonged. In […]
PREVIEW #BFPOXFORD Keynote Profile: Monique Ntumngia, Winner of the Visa Everywhere Initiative
“But Madam, we do not have lights; how are we going to be able to study at night? “When we go into the bushes to search for firewood for cooking, we usually get raped. Madam, we need this to stop.” Aminata, the leader of a group of Muslim girls, presented these questions to my team […]
Business Fights Poverty Oxford 2019 Women’s Equality Zone Workshop: Preparing for possible new ILO regulation
CARE International UK are delighted to support the Business Fights Poverty Challenge on business and GBV and to host the Women’s Equality zone at the Business Fights Poverty Oxford conference on 11 July 2019. By the time this event takes place, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) are likely to have adopted a new international labour […]
Embracing Corporate Responsibility — For Social and Business Impact
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is necessary vocabulary in today’s corporate lexicon. But what CSR really means within the walls of everyday corporate life remains subjective. As we shift toward more conscientious lifestyles, businesses are searching for a true understanding of the customer, partner, supply chain, and employee interpretation of purpose. Companies are exploring how purpose […]
Business Briefing on Unpaid Care and Domestic Work
There is growing evidence that business leaders and managers understand that the unequal and heavy share of unpaid care and domestic work done by women and girls is an issue which matters for the effective (ongoing) operations of their firms. Some companies have already taken practical steps to address the issue by supporting employees along […]
Doing Nothing is Not an Option
Kristin Komives, ISEAL’s Impacts Director spoke to Arjen, the opening key note at this year’s Global Sustainability Standards symposium, to hear his opinion on what’s needed to have a real positive impact. Companies, and the sustainability standards and NGOs that work with them, need to always be thinking about how they can make a positive […]
Ivanka Trump Could Shape African Women’s Entrepreneurship
After decades of working with women entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa, I am hopeful that Ivanka Trump’s initiative will deliver change, provided the interventions are designed for lasting results. To effectively meet the program’s ambitious goal of supporting 50 million women in developing countries by 2025, we will need more than the usual generic, short-term approaches […]
Business Urge for a Robust New Global Law to End Violence and Harassment at Work
30 leading business networks and individual brands are calling for negotiators to deliver a new international law to end violence and harassment in the workplace that genuinely benefits business and employees world-wide. A statement, initiated by the NGO CARE, and supported by Business Fights Poverty, The B Team, BSR and individual brands Unilever, Marks & […]
Pakistani Businesses Need to Hire and Retain More Women to Flourish
Pakistan has made progress in boosting women’s education levels over the past several years—yet less than 8 percent of the country’s workforce are women. Closing that gap will represent a huge economic opportunity for our country. I’m excited that the private sector is taking steps to address the problem. At the Pakistan Stock Exchange on […]
We Won’t Take This Lying Down: Women, Business and Equality in 2019
Based on the current rate of progress, it will take 202 years to close the economic gender gap globally, according to research from World Economic Forum. And so, it was with trepidation that I stepped into the University Women’s Club, London, to learn more about how the Foundation intends to close the gap, faster. If […]