On January 19, JIPYONG LLC (“JIPYONG”) and Business for Social Responsibility (“BSR”) hosted a webinar on “Supply Chain Sustainability and Human Rights Due Diligence.” Last year, JIPYONG partnered with BSR to carry out sustainable business projects , such as human rights due diligence, a study on human rights policy, human rights training , etc. in Korea and other countries in Asia such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, among others. BSR is a global non-profit organization that provides specialized consulting services on sustainability and human rights management. With offices in North America, Europe, and Asia, BSR has provided insights and advice on human rights due diligence and other sustainability issues to more than 300 member companies around the world, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, NIKE, DANONE, BNP Paribas, etc. The webinar began with an introduction on the BSR-JIPYONG Partnership, led by Sung Take LIM, the Managing Partner at JIPYOG, and Jeremy Prepscius, Vice President, Asia-Pacific at BSR. Attorney Chang Wook MIN of JIPYONG gave the first presentation on “Mandatory Human Rights Due Diligence Trends in EU and South Korea,” followed by Rosa Kusbiantoro, Associate Director at BSR, who presented BSR’s Human Rights Due Diligence Framework and Cases; and Jeremy Prepscius, who gave a presentation on Supply Chain Sustainability and Human Rights Risk Management. After the presentations, the four experts, including the presenters, conducted a Q&A session with the webinar attendees.  
  Chang Wook MIN pointed out that Business and Human Rights (BHR) differs from ESG, which evaluates the environmental, social, and corporate governance impact on corporate values, while BHR is based on the idea of “how stakeholders are affected by the non-financial issues.” He introduced the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) as well as the Sustainable Corporate Governance legislative proposal for corporate human rights and environmental due diligence which is under review by the EU Parliament . Min explained that in Korea, the Framework Act on Human Rights Policy was passed by the State Council at the end of 2021, and under Articles 17 and 18 of the said Act, companies themselves are obliged not to violate human rights, nor to be engaged in human rights violations of a third party. He predicted that human rights due diligence, such as conducting human rights impact assessments to detect human rights risks, would grow in importance. Kusbiantoro introduced the recent trend of increasing interest in the intersection of climate and human rights and predicted that efforts to legislate human rights due diligence would be expanded and reinforced worldwide. In particular, she stressed that when conducting human rights impact assessments, prioritization allows for companies to identify, among the most salient risks, the highest focus, while keeping in mind that all salient risks need to be addressed. She then shared BSR’s experience of supporting global companies in conducting human rights due diligence. Prepscius said that the category of the supply chain management includes second- and third-tier suppliers and that it is necessary to see whether the suppliers respect the community or the environment, whether they meet legal and ethical obligations, and whether relevant issues are directly related to the strategy of the company, etc. He defined a sustainable supply chain with efficiency, equity, and transparency as a “good supply chain” and introduced BSR’s methodology for assessing sustainability maturity.  
  In the last discussion session, there were heated discussions on the difference between audit under the Responsible Business Alliance (RBA) standard and human rights due diligence under the UNGPs, the composition of checklists used for human rights impact assessments, stakeholder interviewing methods, the meaning of human rights due diligence from a third-party expert, Korean companies’ countermeasures to human rights due diligence in the EU and the US customs duty regulations, etc. Sung Take LIM, the Managing Partner at JIPYOG, said: “BSR has accumulated the experience in the Human Rights Impact Assessment providing professional services more than 200 times globally, and JIPYONG has advised clients on various sustainability-related issues such as ESG, human rights, and social impact…Utilizing 19 local offices of JIPYONG and BSR located in each continent, both companies will render services to manage human rights risks in the overseas supply chain for domestic global companies.” The webinar on “Supply Chain Sustainability and Human Rights Due Diligence” was broadcast live, and you can watch it again on JIPYONG’s YouTube channel (JIPYONG LLC. - YouTube ).  
   
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