Busi­ness & Hu­man Rights: Gov­ernance, SDGs and fair trans­itions

Course content

The course provides students with comprehensive knowledge of the field of business & human rights (BHR), taking the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and challenges confronting fair transitions to low-carbon economies as concrete focal points for theoretical exploration and practical application.

The media often tell us about human rights scandal associated with business operations. The course will equip students to help identify risks of such problems and help prevent and manage them, ideally to avoid harm and, otherwise, to remedy harm caused. 

Starting from an introduction to human rights and global sustainability governance, the roles and responsibilities of business with regards to human rights will be explored and contextualized. During the course, the SDGs and fair transitions serve to place BHR normativity, challenges, dilemmas and actions into context and as examples of problems and solutions. Human rights problems in the 'green' energy sector and associated industries affect a range of human rights also challenged in other sectors, such as land and labour rights. We will consider these issues in regard to functional business tasks, such as value chain management, stakeholder management, financial management, communication and reporting. Managerial and business leadership perspectives will be the main focus, but we also consider the interaction between state, business and civil society. As the challenges are global, we take a global perspective, including examples from the High North/Arctic as well as the Global South, and the OECD and EU regions.

The course gives students an introduction into the emergence and key elements of the BHR regime and thorough insights into its key normative elements and their implications for business operations. Students will understand the role that the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) play in business enterprises and the important role that BHR concepts such as risk-based due diligence play for major sustainability governance developments in regard to social as well as environmental and climate change challenges and societal needs, globally, in the EU and in the Nordic countries. As part of this, students will be exposed to expectations that businesses consider their human rights impacts when engaging in SDG contributions; dilemmas in regard to balancing climate change mitigation and human rights risks for communities hosting wind farms, hydro-power plants or transition minerals mining; how BHR knowledge, human rights risk/impact assessment and due diligence may support business innovation in regard to  SDG contributions and ensuring a fair transition addressing the needs of future generations without compromising the human rights of current ones; and BHR requirements in regard to sustainable finance and corporate sustainability reporting.

The course equips students with insights, abilities and competences on the significance for organizations engaged in economic activities to understand and manage human rights impacts. Human rights are increasingly of importance to the conduct of business organizations of all sizes, financial actors, and public organizations. Direct or indirect contributions to abuse of human rights may increase the risk profile of an organization, whether private or public. Respect for human rights may enhance an organization’s opportunities for innovation, access to finance and successful stakeholder management. The course enables students to engage in activities related to organization, policy and strategy, value chain management, human rights impact analysis and due diligence, as well as critically reflecting on the human rights implications of broader sustainability governance challenges and opportunities.

The course deploys a combination of teaching forms. Lectures provide the fundamental theoretical framing. Interaction during the course with representatives of companies and other organizations deepens students’ understanding of implications of the current BHR agenda’s implications for business management and its connections to other major sustainability governance issues. Cases, documentaries, reports, exercises and student-led debates will provide students with a hands-on approach and ability to apply theory and BHR normativity.

As an academic field, BHR is an interdisciplinary field, it is novel, and still emergent. As a field of practice, the same applies. As a result, we do not always have set answers – and much depends on the argumentation. The course is designed to equip students with the relevant qualifications in this regard. Interactive parts of the course generally take the form of discussions, students asking questions, and doing exercises and cases.

Nordic Nine: The course develops students’ disciplinary skills and transformational capacities through knowledge with a foundation in the BHR regime and its influence on wider corporate sustainability; cultivating curiosity about connections, complementarity and dilemmas, recognizing and explaining expectations on business to identify and manage human rights impacts, and providing students with knowledge on how to contribute. Such knowledge is built in part in connection to current business commitments to the SDGs as well as the dilemmas confronting a fair ‘green’ transition addressing the needs of future generation without compromising those of current ones. The course is anchored in values on businesses’ human rights responsibilities recognized in interdisciplinary literatures, governance instruments and business commitments. It advances students’ understanding of dilemmas around those values and how to overcome them through critical thinking and constructive collaboration, and their action-oriented capacities for producing prosperity and protecting that of future generations, growing by collaborating and creating value for local communities.