Transforming Business: Aligning Profits with Human Rights

We are delighted to announce the forthcoming book Transforming Business: Aligning Profits with Human Rights, co-authored by Professor Dorothée Baumann-Pauly (GCBHR, University of Geneva), Professor Justine Nolan (Australian Human Rights Institute, UNSW), and Dr. Andy Symington (Australian Human Rights Institute, UNSW).

Fifteen years after the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the field has become good at defining what human rights due diligence should look like on paper. Our book asks a different question: what have companies actually done to create measurable, positive impacts for workers and communities — and what separates genuine transformation from box-ticking compliance?

Drawing on five years of original field research across six industries and multiple geographies — from cobalt mining in the DRC to rubber sourcing in the Amazon, cocoa farming in Côte d’Ivoire to diamond cutting in Botswana — we distil five core components of business model transformation that place the workers and communities at the heart of global supply chains.

Please note the book launch will be from 6:15-7:15pm followed by an apéro 7:15–8:30pm.

The book is open access. Hard copies can be pre-ordered here.