Article One’s Summer Reading List

By Chloe Poynton

We are reaching the height of summer—a time for reflection and relaxation. As Article One and our clients start to head out on holiday, we look back on a series of articles, books, and podcasts that gave us pause, shed light on a new issue, or sparked a new idea.

1. NYU Stern’s Center for Business and Human Rights’s “Putting the “S” in ESG: Measuring Human Rights Performance for Investors.” The report reviews 12 leading ESG frameworks and finds that the industry is still falling short of its objective to provide investors with data to identify strong performance and assess risk when it comes to the social aspects of ESG.
2. Reveal’s Podcast on “Decoding discrimination in America’s temp industry” which looks into discrimination in one of the fastest growing sectors in the United States. The segment explores the underlying discrimination and racism that impact many temporary workers and how the system continues to function this way.
3. The Thun Group’s Discussion Paper on implications of UN Guiding Principles for corporate and investment banking, and the responses provided by the UN Working Group on Business & Human Rights, Professor John Ruggie, BankTrack, and OHCHR. The discussion looks at questions of contribution and linkage and seeks to clarify expectations of the banking sector related to human rights due diligence and access to effective remedy.
4. Business and Human Rights Resource Center’s article on the G20 and Modern Slavery, which argues for governments and business to act now to humanize markets.
5. Finally, we continue to devour books and articles on the impact of artificial intelligence on human rights, including this thought provoking article by Sherif Elsayed-Ali and books including Martin Ford’s The Rise of the Robots and Cathy O’Neal’s Weapons of Math Destruction.

We hope your summer holidays leave you rejuvenated and eager to tackle these challenging issues when you return to work.