Center for Business and Human Rights

A new study from the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights finds that construction companies operating in the Arabian Gulf are able to recruit millions of low- wage migrant workers without incurring the costs of the recruitment process. Instead, in this highly irregular system, most workers themselves are paying for their own recruitment – and much more – before they depart their home countries. These recruitment “fees” may be equal to or more than a year’s salary – which these low-wage laborers must work to pay back once they begin their construction jobs in the Gulf.

In recent weeks the Trump administration has approved the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Bahrain and warmly welcomed Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to the White House, ignoring the failure of both the Bahraini and Egyptian governments to address serious human rights abuses. Now the administration seems poised to notify the Senate of its intention to sell new weapons to Saudi Arabia, reversing an Obama administration decision in December that suspended the sale because of Saudi attacks on civilians in Yemen.

Until recently, sustainable investing was a niche in the broader financial landscape. But today, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors are increasingly important to mainstream investors. Large financial firms like Bloomberg, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are expanding their ESG product and service offerings. Going forward, women and millennials are poised to manage a greater share of global wealth, and to do so in a way that aligns with their values about fairness, the environment and human rights. In the face of rising economic inequality and mounting evidence of the negative externalities of business practices, financial firms are under pressure to demonstrate that they can deliver value in today’s global economy in ways that work for people and communities around the world. 

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) business challenges increasingly are on the agenda for mainstream investors. Many attribute this shift to a rising demand from millennials and women, both groups that are more likely to seek investments consistent with their values.

For more than two centuries, the United States has successfully integrated wave after wave of new immigrants. These individuals have helped drive a culture of ambition, innovation and creativity and made an incalculable contribution to America's economic and political success. Two dramatic recent actions by the Trump administration – new deportation guidelines and a just revised but still ill-advised travel ban – now threaten to reverse this legacy, to stoke ethnic and religious divisions within American society and to seriously undermine U.S. political and economic standing in the world.

In the coming days, members of the U.S. Senate will perform their constitutional duty to provide advice and consent to more than 1,200 presidential nominees for senior positions throughout the federal government. Following a highly contentious presidential election and in a deeply divided country, the confirmation process will be subject to intense public scrutiny.

This week Hurricane Matthew slammed into Haiti, dealing another blow to our poorest, most challenged neighbor. After an earthquake in 2010 killed more than 200,000 people, a United Nations peacekeeping force introduced cholera to Haiti, infecting almost 800,000 people. According to Doctors Without Borders, there have been close to 30,000 cholera-related deaths.

Though the International Labour Organisation (ILO) is almost 100 years old, its annual International Labour Conference which convened earlier this month was the first time global supply chains were on the agenda. Supply chains are ubiquitous in the global economy and a major driver of global employment, so it’s telling that it took so long for them to appear on the ILO’s formal agenda.

In recent months, debates about global economic inequality have reached boiling point. In Britain, voters will soon decide whether to exit the European Union against the backdrop of a growing Brexit movement fuelled by perceptions of an unfair European trading system.

Over the last year, a series of Pulitzer Prize-winning news stories have revealed human trafficking, forced labor, and other abuses in the seafood industry. The complexity of global seafood supply chains and significant gaps in regulation have made it very difficult to track, much less remedy, these abuses.