400 participants from some 60 countries (28 Asian countries) joined the UN Asia Forum held on 19 and 20 April 2016 in Doha, including government, business, civil society, human rights groups, academia and media representatives. The Forum builds on the 2014 Africa Forum and 2013 Latin America & Caribbean Forum. With these forums, the UN hopes to speed up and scale up awareness and implementation of the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in these regions. The agenda for the Asia Regional Forum focused on the three pillars of the Guiding Principles:
1) The state duty to protect human rights against business-related impacts;
2) The corporate responsibility to respect human rights; and
3) The need for effective remedy for victims of business-related human rights abuse.
JBCE was invited as a panellist to speak on the first pillar. CSR Committee Chair Yukako Kinoshita made intervention on what does business expect from Governments in terms of implementing the Guiding Principles and how can coherence be improved. She shared JBCE’s experiences and discussions held in this area including the JBCE Roundtable on Business and Human Right.