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Business conduct has a major impact on the realization of human rights. We strive to ensure that labour rights are upheld in companies’ value chains. Workers must be provided with adequate housing, a living wage and be allowed to organize. We must put an end to child labour and forced labour.
Loopholes in tax laws must be plugged so that all companies are made to pay their due share. Tax is a human rights issue. Without tax revenue, states cannot take care of public services such as basic education, the justice system, or health care.
Consumption of goods and services makes up a quarter of the carbon footprint of Finns. Urgent action is needed from companies to fight climate change. Companies must map their climate impacts and actively seek to minimize their adverse climate impacts throughout their global value chains.
We monitor the human rights impacts and tax responsibility of business enterprises. Our uncompromising research is based on primary data: we interview factory workers first-hand and comb through companies’ financial statements. Based on the information gathered, we make recommendations for companies and decision-makers. Read more about our research programmes for Decent Work and Tax Justice Programme.
We promote public debate around issues arising from our research and increase awareness among consumers and decision-makers. In order to achieve structural change, we actively seek to influence regulation of business conduct in Finland and internationally.
To guarantee our independence we do not accept commissions from companies. We engage in active dialogue with the companies we conduct research on. These companies also have the right to review our research findings before publication, in line with our ethical guidelines.
Our coffee report prompted the coffee sector to increase their efforts to ensure social sustainability of their coffee. In 2018, coffee roasters purchased over 45 million kilos more certified coffee than before the publication of our report in 2016. A co-operative in Honduras, where we conducted field research, took steps to eliminate child labour.
We promote regular public debate on the consequences of aggressive tax planning by e.g. publishing case studies that demonstrate how loopholes in tax legislation are exploited by companies. We also make sure that decision-makers know how to fix the loopholes. Partly due to our work, a major loophole in Finnish interest limitation rules was recently fixed making it harder for corporations to shift profits abroad.
The directive requires companies to ensure that human rights and environmental obligations are respected along their chain of activities. Companies will have to take appropriate measures to prevent, mitigate, bring to an end or minimize the adverse impacts in their chain of activities. Additionally, companies can be held liable for the damage caused. Finnwatch coordinated the CSDDD campaign in Finland.
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