From Commitment to Action: Bennett Freeman on the Role of Companies in Defending Civic Space

By Nancy Reyes Mullins

In a world where civic space is under increasing pressure, companies face both a business imperative and moral responsibility to engage meaningfully with human rights defenders. Leading up to the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights, held 24-26 November 2025, I recently spoke with Bennett Freeman, a long-standing leader in the business and human rights space, about how companies can move from commitment to action. His insights are both a call to action and a practical roadmap for corporate actors.

Q: What inspired you to start working on issues related to human rights defenders and corporate accountability?

There were two motivations, one long-standing and deep, and the other much more immediate and topical.

The first backdrop for me was that in the Clinton administration, I’d served as US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labour, and I ran our bilateral human rights diplomacy with embassies around the world, including on labor rights. That work involved a tremendous amount of interaction with human rights defenders. I had the privilege of meeting some of the most committed and courageous human rights defenders in the world during that period and I kept in touch with some of them over the years.

A decade ago, it became apparent that human rights defenders were being threatened and attacked all around the world against the backdrop of the erosion of civic freedoms. I saw a personal challenge and opportunity to reconnect with my work with defenders and my ongoing work on corporate accountability and human rights. I can’t emphasize enough the threats and the attacks that arose in the previous decade that continue against defenders around the world not just in countries with autocratic governments, but in democracies as well.

A pivotal moment for me came when I was asked to speak at the launch of a report by the Charities Aid Foundation in London in 2016. I observed that it was a wonderful report full of very instructive and inspiring case studies, but that these are hard issues, and I don’t think we will have many more case studies until we wrestle with the tough dilemmas for companies in deciding how to intervene on behalf of defenders. Even the most committed companies hesitate before putting their relationships with host country governments on the line to do something that’s so challenging. I said, we need some guidance for companies to help decide whether, and if so, how to act. That public challenge turned into the influential Shared Space Under Pressure report, of which I had the privilege of being the lead author. Sometimes you need to be careful what you wish for in public as you might be the person stuck doing it, and that’s what happened to me.

Q: What are the most common corporate misunderstandings that prevent companies from fulfilling their human rights commitments?

I would highlight two misunderstanding in particular, both of which we addressed explicitly in the Shared Space Under Pressure report. The first is that companies often believe that supporting defenders almost always requires doing so publicly. I worry that this is an inhibiting factor. But there’s private diplomacy and public diplomacy, and there’s a role for both, sometimes in combination. More often than not, starting with private engagement will be more effective and less risky for companies than starting out on a soapbox with a bullhorn.

I want to debunk this notion that there must always be a public statement.

The second problem, and this is an insidious one that we’ve addressed in report after report, is that some companies struggle with understanding who human rights defenders are, and in accepting the legitimacy of their work, particularly when those defenders are critics. Indeed, companies need to instead bend over backwards to engage with their critics.

Bound up with that problem is the parallel sense that some defenders aren’t really legitimate. They may be imposters, hustlers, or even criminals, and while some individuals may be bad actors, that’s no excuse for broad disengagement. If there’s doubt, the best way to resolve it is through good old-fashioned stakeholder engagement and due diligence. Everyone’s rights must be respected.

Q: Do companies hesitate because they fear they’ll further stir the pot by engaging?

Yes, and that’s not necessarily an unreasonable hesitation on the part of companies. Companies and the people who work for them are largely rational—and more often than not, well-intentioned. But when you have complicated situations where a company’s project or operations are under criticism, tensions with governments, and sometimes security forces are involved, there are real reasons for hesitation.

Our advice throughout all the reports, and summarized once again in the new International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) report, Business frameworks and actions to support defenders: a retrospective and recommendations, is that the default for companies should be to engagement. To engage respectfully and carefully, and to of course consider their own interests, but to also prioritize the safety of defenders and the local communities they represent.

Q: How do you see companies effectively doing consultation with human rights defenders? What are best practices?

They first need to identify who the local human rights defenders are, and who are the local NGOs, civic organizations, and international NGOs that work with and support them and who cannot be substitutes but compliments for engagement. This focus must be part of continuous human rights due diligence. Companies need to talk directly with defenders about their grievances, their objectives, the threats they perceive to their local communities, and to their own safety and security, lives, and livelihoods.

This effort means applying rigorously the disciplines that have been developed over the last 15 years around human rights due diligence and stakeholder and local community engagement, with a lens on defenders. Who are they? What are their motivations? How do they fit with local communities?

The new ISHR report touches on the importance of these considerations, as does the original Shared Space Under Pressure report, the Voluntary Principles Initiative (VPI), and Unilever’s Principles in Support of Human Rights Defenders, which include detailed operational tools and checklists. We even proposed establishing common ground through the use of a Memoranda of Understanding (MOU) for working with security forces to ensure they understand who defenders are and what risks they face.

It is complicated stuff, but the groundwork has been done to pull together the normative standards, policies, and implementation guidance.

Q: What should companies do when there’s an immediate crisis, like a credible threat to a defender’s life?

We address how to approach such a situation in all of these documents, but at the end of the day the company and its people must make situation-specific decisions. There’s no single fit-for-all-purposes solution you’ll find on page X of a guidance document, what you’ll find instead are approaches, questions to ask, and frameworks for decision-making. Ultimately, the company has the burden of deciding what to do and how to do it.

Q: What departments or company functions should lead this work?

While headquarters may guide sensitive issues with global implications, the lead should usually be taken by in-country management that’s close to the ground. It will take contributions from people in different functions with overlapping complementary areas of expertise. There would rarely be a circumstance involving a defender or a threat to civic freedoms where any single function unilaterally calls the shots. Usually, two or three functions, if not more, need to be at the table.

Q: Businesses have obligations to shareholders and others. Can you speak to the business rationale for engaging with defenders?

Where defenders can operate freely and safely, companies are more likely to have stable, predictable operating environments. That’s not just theory, it’s history.

In the past, companies have learned this the hard way, such as through reputational harm or a physical inability to operate due to loss of a license to operate, which could have been avoided through engagement with defenders. The mining industry is a clear example of an industry where companies have lost multi-billion-dollar projects due to conflicts over land and water rights. Some of these companies have learned their lesson pretty well and really upped their game.

I have been really impressed by the efforts of individual apparel companies, and two closely related multistakeholder initiatives, The Fair Labor Association (FLA) and Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), in responding to the January 2014 shootings of striking workers in Cambodia’s garment sector. They used the leverage of their member brands to threaten the Cambodian government with taking their sourcing elsewhere and supporting an initiative in the EU that cut back GSP equivalent trade preferences for Cambodia until they improved freedom of association for workers. This was an encouraging example of a group of companies coming together on behalf of workers and understanding that the companies individually and collectively had a stake in a peaceful, nonviolent, stable operating environment connected with the garment industry.

I think that some companies, and indeed whole industries, are beginning to embrace the proposition that it’s in their best interest to consider these human rights issues. As the great late Sir Geoffrey Chandler would famously say, after making the business case so persuasively in the early days of the business and human rights movement —”The hell with the business case. It’s about doing the right thing.”

I’d like to believe that that’s sufficient motivation, but I think that in the current geopolitical situation, we need to refresh and reframe the business case for human rights. Companies need to see that it’s in their interest to not only support human rights generally, but to support civic freedoms and human rights defenders.

I believe that in the last six or seven years, we’ve moved the defenders and civic freedoms agenda from the background to the foreground of the business and human rights agenda. Now it’s time to move from commitment to action. Dozens of companies have policies in place. What’s needed now is implementation and accountability. We’ve put together the normative standards, the analytical and operational frameworks for key sectors from extractives to agribusiness, trackers and data, the NGO accountability tool and campaigns. Now, companies must move from commitment to action.

If you will be attending the UN Forum and wish to connect with a member of the Article One team and/or Bennett in-person, please feel free to reach out to hello@articleoneadvisors.com or bf@bfreemanassociates.com.

To continue learning more about the role of business to engage with and protect defenders, please read the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) latest report, Business frameworks and actions to support defenders: a retrospective and recommendations, authored by Bennett Freeman and Ragnhild Handagard and supported by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, and follow the progress of the recently launched US Corporate Human Rights Index, a new tool that tracks the core human rights policies and commitments of 54 US companies in the technology, apparel, extractives, automotive, and food/beverage and agriculture sectors.