Over mangoes and an energy drink with a longhorn-skull for a logo, our self-appointed village guide casually mentioned that he had told the military we would be coming to his rural village in the morning.

Our interpreter relayed this with a stony face. It was the first thing she brought up back in our car after the interview.

Her husband and our driver, the indefatigably brave, charming and socially conscious Shell, who spent 14 years in various of Myanmar’s notorious detention facilities as a political prisoner, heard the news and paused. “If I go to jail for this, it will have been in support of development for my fellow citizens.” Then he paused again and said, “But I’ve done worse – this won’t be the reason I go back to jail.”

This thought process was evoked by the mere idea of interviewing rural people about an electricity project – a gas-fired power plant replacement that the World Bank is funding.

Make no mistake, this power plant needs to be replaced – in its current state it is 39 years old, 17% efficient, and leaking hydrochloric acid and fuel into the surrounding soil. A new plant will double electric output, burn more cleanly, and avoid the HCl problem entirely.

But where energy is allocated when electric output doubles  is an important question. The district the power plant is located in was a conflict zone until two years ago, partially controlled by the Karen ethnicity’s army and totally closed to foreigners. The conflict between the ethnic Karen people and the Myanmar government dates back to an early separatist movement in 1949. Brutal government crackdowns perpetuated anti-government sentiments within the population, which resulted in ongoing violence until a ceasefire agreement was signed in 2012.

The fragile ceasefire has come under scrutiny as Karen people have begun questioning the Myanmar government’s commitment to their welfare. A project that benefits the ethnic majority while leaving this ethnic minority literally in the dark risks exacerbating old tensions.

On the flip side, a financial investment in electricity that raises the living standards of ethnic minorities could concretely demonstrate that the peace process has created a space for shared benefits between the Karen and Myanmar ethnic groups.

The military didn’t talk to us, though they sat across the street while we chatted with people and watched us as we left town. Shell promises to keep us posted and send us updates on his freedom. As we analyze the potential human rights impacts of this investment program, we’ll post more.

(Photo Credit: Rachel Greiman June 2014)

We’ve been assessing corporate impacts on human rights (“conducting HRIAs”) for six years. In that time, we’ve watched corporate projects respond to an incredible range of contextual changes, from the deaths of presidents to the loss of global aid, from market shocks to mass protests. What has become clear is that human rights conditions aren’t stable.

This isn’t, in itself, a particularly novel notion. But for companies, it has some real, on-the-ground meaning.

We wrote about the implications for companies operating in changeable contexts in the Environmental Impact Assessment Review — you can find that article here (subscription).

Hopefully our next article will be open-source, so readers won’t need an institutional log-in to see it.

If you’d like to read the article, email us!

We’ve been coming to Uchindile since 2009, watching the morphing relationship between Green Resources and local communities for five years. Green Resources is a Norway-based forestry company with major operations in Tanzania, where pine and eucalyptus are grown for carbon credits and harvested for sale as transmission poles, timber and pulp. Uchindile is one of the company’s flagship plantations.

The aim has always been to monitor change, and the hope has always been to witness improvement. The tricky thing with “improvement” in human rights, though, is that rights are distinct privileges and freedoms that work together in complex ways, and improving conditions to support one right (say, the right to food) does not automatically result in improvements in another right (say, the right to health).

At Uchindile, we’ve found that many of the human rights risks we identified in 2009 are remedied in one location but relocated to another. At Uchindile workers sleep one-to-a-bed. At Kitete II, 12 men are stuffed into each room, sharing grimy mattresses with at least one other person. Some of the remedies instituted by the company (supplying two meals to workers per day and regular transport to work sites, to respect the right to food and favorable working conditions) are only instituted for part of the year. Dennis walks 10 km each way to the fields every day (on rain-slick mud, in the dark) to avoid sleeping there.

Beyond the partial-remedies which need to be monitored, new rights risks are also arising. As forestry acreage increases, land stresses have developed in local villages. At one community, eight land disputes are now running between longtime residents and new arrivals over who holds the right to use lands. In another, the massive expansion of forestry (both by Green Resources and new copy-cat businesses) has pressed wild animals closer to village crops, resulting in major crop losses.

Bibi Zanadoya, pictured here, offered a tour of cornfields destroyed by pigs. She will only have three months of food for this year – for the rest of the year she will be working as a day laborer for cash.

HRIA cannot end after an initial assessment, because impacts morph as projects grow and develop. A one-off assessment would not have identified risks posed to Bibi Zanadoya’s right to food, health and an adequate standard of living, nor would it have recognized that in addressing Human Rights impacts at one plantation dormitory Green Resources would replicate the problems in new dormitories.

During a 3-day training in human rights impact assessment (HRIA) for the Tanzanian Commission on Human Rights and Good Governance (CHRAGG), a Tanzanian investigator asked the question that now titles this note.

Who indeed? Corporate HRIA has swiftly moved into the sphere of consultants since the publication and broad endorsement of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in 2011. Technical consultants, management consultants, risk analysts and lawyers now consult with companies on their human rights impacts and due diligence processes, though these investigations very rarely reach the public.

Given the opacity that this has generated, perhaps an alternative field should be conducting HRIAs.

The CHRAGG’s interest in conducting such assessments is a powerful signal of the potential that government agencies can have in the business and human rights sphere. As an entity charged with investigation human rights risks and educating the public about rights, CHRAGG can bring both investigative capacity and commitment to transparency to HRIA. Its mandate authorizes its investigators to enter locations where they believe human rights violations are occurring, which provides a strong impetus for companies to facilitate investigations and voluntarily supply requested data.

Further, CHRAGG may have the authority to evaluate the adequacy of HRIAs conducted by companies. Where companies claim to “know and show” their human rights impacts by conducting due diligence, national human rights institutions can demand proof. This option does not even require human rights institutions to conduct the assessments, but entitles them to review, critique, and request clarification. A review process would also improve transparency in the human rights due diligence sphere. Opportunities abound, and CHRAGG appears to be seizing them.

Dominic Mlenje worked with NomoGaia on the Kayelekera Uranium Mine HRIA for 5 years, from 2008 to 2013. Hired initially as a driver, he soon made his skills known in vehicular mechanics, rightsholder interviewing and issue investigation. He was in touch with the fears and aspirations of community members, and they opened up immediately to him, while we outsiders were far slower to earn trust.

He was a talented and diligent worker. He was also a dear friend. Malawi faced very difficult years in 2012 and 2013, and though his family suffered from economic shocks, illness and political turmoil, he found ways to smile and laugh.

We will miss him in countless ways.