Engage early: Lessons from national actions plan on business and human rights in Asia-Pacific

Bangkok (ILO News) Business and human rights, labour standards, responsible business conduct, ESG, trade and supply-chain expectations are increasingly interconnected. While these agendas are often addressed separately, businesses are increasingly encountering them as part of a broader set of expectations about how they manage their impacts on workers and other stakeholders.

For companies, this puts greater emphasis on implementation: understanding risks, translating commitments into business practices, and responding to expectations from governments, buyers, investors and other stakeholders. It also creates an important role for Employer and Business Membership Organizations (EBMOs).

New ILO research covering Lao PDR, Malaysia, Mongolia, the Philippines and Viet Nam finds that private-sector engagement in National Action Plan processes on business and human rights has often been fragmented and concentrated during the drafting stage. Quite often by then important decisions about priorities and policy design may already have been shaped.

Experience across the region suggests that earlier engagement can make a difference. Business participation in Malaysia's national baseline assessment helped bring operational perspectives into the evidence underpinning its National Action Plan, while Viet Nam and Mongolia have included business organizations in NAP governance structures.

The experience also offers lessons beyond Asia and the Pacific. For EBMOs elsewhere, a key takeaway is that effective engagement starts before policies are drafted. Building relationships with governments early, using existing member networks and surveys to gather evidence, and bringing together perspectives from different sectors and business sizes can help EBMOs contribute more effectively throughout the policy process. Just as importantly, engagement can be linked to practical support for members, turning participation in policy discussions into an opportunity to strengthen business understanding and capacity on responsible business conduct.

For EBMOs, this points to a more strategic role: bringing evidence and sector experience into policymaking, ensuring that the perspectives of SMEs are represented, and helping companies understand what evolving responsible business expectations mean in practice.

That practical support is increasingly important. Across the five countries studied, stakeholders highlighted demand for tools that help businesses, particularly SMEs, identify human rights risks, undertake human rights due diligence, engage suppliers and understand developments affecting their markets and supply chains.

The new ILO publication, National Action Plans on Business and Human Rights: A Guide for Employer and Business Membership Organizations, translates these findings into practical guidance for EBMOs.

Its central message is clear: engage earlier and move from awareness towards practical implementation. As responsible business agendas increasingly intersect, EBMOs can help ensure that business perspectives inform policymaking while supporting their members to put responsible business principles into practice.