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	Promoting economic security for communities affected by conflict by International Committee of the Red Cross   Sudan: seed and tools for half a million people in Darfur. (ICRC)   Almost half a million conflict-affected people in Darfur have been given seed and agricultural tools by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in time for the planting season and the first rainfall.   The aid has been distributed in cooperation with the Sudanese Red Crescent Society since June to provide livelihood support for residents and displaced people in all parts of Darfur, including a quarter million people in the Jebel Mara region. Every family was given a package containing 28 kilograms of groundnut, sorghum, millet, cow pea and assorted vegetable seeds in addition to two tools.   "Delivering the seed in time for planting and the first rains was a race against time," said Christophe Driesse, who coordinates the ICRC''s economic security activities in Sudan. "Organizing more than 400 trucks to deliver the seed and food to remote villages was quite a challenge."   Between July and September – a period known as the "lean season" – demand for grain increases as food stocks diminish both at household and market levels. In order to help particularly vulnerable people get through this period, the ICRC is distributing more than 4,000 tonnes of food in addition to the seed.   The ICRC has been assisting the victims of the armed conflict in Darfur since 2003. In partnership with the Sudanese Red Crescent Society and local authorities and communities, it provides emergency and long-term assistance for people displaced by the conflict, supports local health-care facilities and promotes compliance with international humanitarian law.   The ICRC’s work to promote economic security aims to ensure that households and communities affected by conflict or armed violence can meet essential needs and maintain or restore sustainable livelihoods.   Its activities range from emergency distributions of food and essential household items to programmes for sustainable food production and micro-economic initiatives. Needs covered include food, shelter, access to health care and education.   Economic security activities are closely linked to health, water and habitat programmes. All these activities come within the ICRC’s global mission to protect victims of conflict.   The ICRC has defined four degrees of crisis regarding the coverage of essential needs and adjusts its response accordingly. In pre-crisis and acute crisis situations, the response meets essential needs – the aim is to save lives. In chronic crisis and post-crisis situations, the response promotes economic consolidation and reconstruction – the aim is to support livelihoods. The Economic Security Unit assesses needs at household level in order to obtain first-hand local information.   Action taken may include providing services directly, to make up for shortfalls from regular providers, supporting local service providers, persuading the authorities to shoulder their responsibilities and encouraging action by third parties where needed.   Relief aid is primarily intended to save lives and protect livelihoods when they are at immediate risk. This is done by giving people access to goods essential for their survival, such as household items, food, seed and tools. At the same time, ICRC delegates will maintain a dialogue with all parties to improve the protection of these populations at risk.   Production aid is intended to spur food production and possibly generate income, and ultimately to restore sustainable livelihoods. This means preserving household or community productive assets, such as agriculture and livestock. The aid includes vaccinating, culling and restocking herds, distributing tools, seed and fishing tackle and promoting micro-economic initiatives and capacity-building efforts.   Structural aid, provided mainly in chronic crisis and post-crisis settings, is intended to revive the output of sustainable productive assets (agriculture, for example) by encouraging service providers and other parties concerned to provide the required input, such as seed and tools. It may also be used to promote improvements in such areas as agricultural extension services and State-delivered social welfare programmes.   Micro-economic initiatives aim to strengthen income generation in households and entire communities in a sustainable manner and in a given time frame. The projects are tailored to meet individual needs, as expressed by the recipients. The most commonly used micro-economic tools are productive grants, vocational training and small loans. Visit the related web page
	Joint Civil Society Statement on Business and Human Rights by ICJ, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch & agencies   June 2011   Joint Civil Society Statement on Business and Human Rights to the 17th Session of the UN Human Rights Council.   The United Nations Human Rights Council is expected to adopt a decision this week, before its current session ends on June 17, that will set the direction for its future work on business and human rights.   This represents a crucial opportunity for the Council to tackle the most pressing human rights challenges associated with transnational corporations and other businesses enterprises. Leading human rights organizations have proposed concrete, actionable steps the Council should take when it approves a new resolution on this topic.   Unfortunately however, the draft resolution before the Council falls far short of what is needed. We fear that if the Council adopts the resolution as it stands, it will have failed in its fundamental mission to advance the protection of human rights. The draft resolution suffers from three main shortcomings, each of which we urge the Council to address in order to ensure broad civil society support:   It focuses almost exclusively on the dissemination and implementation of the proposed Guiding Principles, which are incomplete in important respects and do not fully embody the core human rights principles contained in the UN “Protect, Respect, Remedy” Framework approved by the Council in 2008.   It lacks a mandate for the follow-on mechanism to examine allegations of business-related abuse and evaluate gaps in legal protections, an aspect stressed by civil society groups from around the world. Neither of these essential tasks is embedded in the proposed three-year follow-on mandate for a new special procedure, a working group of five experts.   It does not clearly recognize the Council’s unique role to provide global leadership in human rights by working toward strengthening of standards and creating effective implementation and accountability mechanisms. To facilitate the Council’s deliberations, we have elaborated further on each of these issues:   First, the draft’s central focus on the proposed Guiding Principles is misplaced.   Although the Guiding Principles are a starting point, on their own they cannot effectively tackle today’s main challenges. They do not constitute the comprehensive set of recommendations and guidance, as the draft resolution claims. The Guiding Principles are meant to serve as a guidance tool to implement the “Protect, Respect, Remedy”   Framework and will need to be developed further over time and/or complemented with other initiatives. Full implementation of the 2008 UN Framework will require more work on key issues such as accountability, the extraterritorial reach of laws and jurisdiction, and remedies for victims.   Second, the draft resolution limits the role of the new Working Group of five experts to a large extent to simply promoting and disseminating the Guiding Principles. The working group should instead be given a clear mandate to examine, assess and formulate recommendations with regard to current practice by governments and companies, including in relation to concrete cases and existing problems, in order to evaluate whether and how the UN Framework is being implemented, and in doing so it should refer to the Guiding Principles as well as to all applicable and relevant international responsibilities and obligations.   Third, the Special Representative on business and human rights, Professor John Ruggie, whose tenure has now ended after a six-year period, has correctly said that the UN “can and must lead intellectually and by setting expectations and aspirations.”   The follow-on mandate should work in this spirit, in order to close governance gaps brought about by globalization and substantially reduce business-related violations of human rights. This necessarily entails work to analyse protection gaps and options for further legal developments. Victims of business-related harm deserve no less.   The draft resolution’s lack of ambition for the follow on mandate is disappointing, and it remains unclear whether the proposed Working Group and Forum on Business and Human Rights, once in effect, will together provide a robust and credible mechanism for protecting rights and seeking solutions for people whose rights are abused in connection with business operations. That will depend in part on the extent to which these bodies help ensure adherence to and continued development of standards for business and human rights.   Finally, we wish to stress that it will be essential to select a set of experts for the new Working Group who have a strong expertise in human rights and a proven ability to engage with affected individuals and communities. Legal expertise and a thorough knowledge of business and human rights issues are also essential. Visit the related web page
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