Course #7. Human rights and impact assessment
This intermediate level master class outlines the human rights issues associated with large projects (with an emphasis on the extractive industries) and provides participants with practical ways to operationalize the corporate responsibility to respect human rights as established in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which were developed by Prof John Ruggie (who received the IAIA 2014 Global Environment Award). Communities living in conflict, post-conflict countries, and areas affected or recovering from natural and industrial disasters as well as climate change impacts are often exposed to violations of their human rights, which affects the magnitude of the impacts received and the possibility of recovering from the crisis and compromises a socially sustainable future.
The course seeks to bring human rights issues into the impact assessment field of practice and, by using integrated impact assessment methods, will provide an effective way to identify the human rights issues of projects and the scenarios where projects are developed.| Level: | Intermediate |
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| Prerequisites: | Participants should have a general understanding of impact assessment |
| Language: | English |
| Duration: | 2 days (14-15 May) |
| Price: | US$475 |
| Min/Max: | 10-30 |
| Instructor(s): | Nora Gotzmann, Senior Advisor, Danish Institute for Human Rights (Denmark)
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Ana Gabriela Factor is a senior consultant at the social performance and social impact assessment consulting firm Community Insights Group and is currently based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Gabriela is an Environmental and Social Impact specialist who has over 16 years of working experience in international environmental, development and extractive projects in Latin America, South East Asia, Africa, and the Arctic.
Gabriela has hands-on experience with training of technical staff, governmental officers and civil society organizations in environmental and social issues, gender mainstreaming and elaboration and review of ESIA. Gabriela has provided numerous training courses, reviewed training programs, and contributed to curricula for the training components of projects in Ghana, Bolivia, Laos, and Uruguay, among others. Course organizers and clients include the World Bank, DANIDA, FINIDA, SIDA, ECOWAS, and UNOPs. Gabriela is an active IAIA member and was one of the trainers of the IAIA courses “Ecosystem Services in Impact Assessment” at the 2013 Conference in Calgary, “Social Impact Assessment and Management in Spanish” at the 2014 Conference in Viña del Mar, “Human Rights and Impact Assessment” at the 2015 and 2017 Conferences in Florence and Montreal, and “Social and Health lmpact Assessment and Management in Spanish” during the special symposium in Panama. Gabriela is also a trainer in the 2-week course “Land access, Resettlement and Social Sustainability” at Groningen University, sponsored by World Bank and EIB, provided in June and November 2015, 2016 and 2017.
Gabriela’s experience includes the assessment of impacts during construction and operation phases of major projects, stakeholder analysis, design and implementation of engagement plans, grievance mechanisms, multi-stakeholder consultations, and social investment programs. Gabriela is currently working on environmental and social due diligences, social and human rights performance and impacts of NGOs, and oil companies and renewable energy projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Nora Gotzmann works as Senior Adviser at the Danish Institute for Human Rights, in the area of Human Rights and Development. She is also an adjunct researcher at the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining, University of Queensland, Australia. She works with multinational companies to improve understanding of human rights risks and impacts and to develop ways of integrating human rights into business practice. Her work focuses primarily on the extractive industries, working in a range of international corporate and site-level settings. Nora also works with civil society actors and National Human Rights Institutions training and building capacity to engage on human rights and business.
Nora’s current project and research work focuses on assessment of human rights risks and impacts, community-company grievance resolution, Export Credit Agencies, human rights training for business and National Human Rights Institutions, and business for development. Nora is one of the lead developers and trainers of the “Human Rights and Impact Assessment” course, provided at the 2015 Conference in Florence and 2017 in Montreal.
Prior to joining the Danish Institute for Human Rights, Nora worked at the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining, where her work focused on human rights due diligence and community-company grievance resolution. She has also contributed to the work of the former Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Business and Human Rights, Prof John Ruggie, on several topics, including the Corporate Law Tools Project.
Tulika Bansal works as Senior Adviser at the Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR). In this role she provides expert advice on human rights due diligence to leading multinational companies in various sectors including the food and beverage, extractives and tourism sectors.
Tulika has led and carried out numerous country-level human rights impact assessments (HRIA) in Africa, Eurasia and Asia. She is also involved in the development of impact assessment methodologies, including DIHR's HRIA Guidance and Toolbox and collaborative approaches to HRIA. Together with UNICEF she developed the “Children’s Rights in Impact Assessments Tool,” which offers companies guidance on how to integrate children’s rights into its existing human rights impact assessments, and has contributed to other resources on children’s rights and business.
Geographical areas of expertise include responsible business in Burma/Myanmar and India. She is part of the Myanmar project team, which has co-founded the Myanmar Center for Responsible Business (MCRB) in Yangon, for which she has led a sector-wide impact assessment of the tourism sector and is currently leading on a similar assessment in the palm oil sector in Myanmar.