The Engagement and Remedy Forum for Responsible Business Conduct 2021

In December 2019, the “Engagement & Remedy Guideline” was publicly announced by the Global Compact Network Japan and the Business and Human Rights Lawyer’s Network. The aim of this guideline is to promote constructive dialogue between business enterprises and society, to enhance grievance mechanisms, and to secure access to remedy. In commemoration of this development, a symposium entitled “Towards Promotion of Responsible Business Conduct and Supply Chains” was organized in February last year. The Sasakawa Peace Foundation joined this event as a co-organizer. In this symposium, the need to enhance grievance mechanisms in line with the Engagement & Remedy Guideline was reaffirmed based on the fact that the activities for the access to remedy is lagging behind, which is one of the three pillars of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. 
　The purpose of this forum is to maintain and even enhance this momentum to fortify grievance mechanisms generated by the above symposium. After this symposium, there were two major developments. One is that the Japanese Government launched the “National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights (2020-2025)” (NAP) in October 2020. The other development is that the “Engagement and Remedy Project” came into being which is to implement the Engagement & Remedy Guidelines, especially the Grievance Center Guideline. This forum provides not only the latest findings and good practices about grievance mechanisms in and outside of Japan, but also to indicate the roles that the NAP and Engagement & Remedy project will play in terms of promoting grievance mechanisms. 
　In this forum, we invite Professor John Ruggie, the former UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the Issue of Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises for the keynote address. We also invite Mr. Mikito Toyama, the director of the Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs Division, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We also invite distinguished panelists and commentators for this event. We look forward to your attendance.