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Back Business and Human Rights: Council of Europe HELP (6 hr) free online course!

Companies have the ability to impact peoples’ lives and the environments in which they operate, the more if they operate as multinational enterprises. While companies generally bring benefits to society in the form of employment opportunities, technological advancement, tax revenues and investment; the operations, actions and influence of private companies can also have a detrimental effect on the rights of their employees and the wider community.

The question of respect for human rights and accountability for violations by companies has been the subject of increasing debate at both international and national levels. Whilst the primary duty to ensure the protection of human rights lies with States, companies are increasingly becoming aware of their own responsibility in this field.

A number of important legal and policy developments have been adopted at the national and international level, and companies are increasingly seeking to develop practices and processes to meet the growing standards and expectations.

The Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals (HELP) Programme of the Council of Europe developed an online course on this subject back in 2015, which has been updated in July 2021. This free HELP online course addresses the legal frameworks, methodologies, and practical actions on how States, corporate actors and legal professionals can prevent, mitigate, and remedy potential or actual corporate related human rights abuses.

The updated HELP online course has been developed with experts in the field and relevant Council of Europe representatives, namely from the European Social Charter and Human Rights Directorate, the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Secretariat of the Partial Agreement EUR-OPA. Representatives of the Fundamental Rights Agency of the European Union also contributed to the development of the course.

This course has been developed alongside the HELP course on The Environment and Human Rights. These two courses are intended as complementary resources that can be taken together or separately.

This updated course was developed under the Project “Online Platform for Business and Human Rights”, implemented by the Council of Europe HELP Programme in cooperation with the Council of Europe Steering Committee for Human Rights (CDDH), funded by the Dutch and German Authorities. The views herein can in no way be taken to reflect the official position of Germany or the Netherlands.

Course Structure

The course contains 4 substantive modules and has an estimated learning time of 6 hours.

Module 0: Introduction

Welcome message, navigation instructions, course authors and course target group

Module 1: Overview of Business and Human Rights

Context, key concepts and frameworks

Module 2: Preventing Harm - State duties to protect and prevent

State duties and preventing abuses by businesses in the European Convention system
New approaches
The State as a commercial actor
Policy coherence

Module 3: Preventing Harm - Business responsibility to respect

Creating and embedding a rights-respecting culture
Conducting human rights due diligence: assessing, prioritising, acting, tracking, communicating
Stakeholder engagement and remedy

Module 4: Defending rights and remedying harm

The importance of remedy
What is an effective remedy?

Barriers to remedy

Mechanisms for seeking remedy

The wider legal environment for remedy

Access the free online course

The course can be accessed by visiting the Council of Europe HELP online platform at http://help.elearning.ext.coe.int/

First you need to open a HELP Platform account if you have not yet done so (2 minutes). Then you can follow this link to directly access the online course: http://help.elearning.ext.coe.int/course/view.php?id=1760

Upon successfully completing the course, a HELP statement of accomplishment can be generated in an electronic format and can be printed by the user.

The updated HELP course on Business and Human Rights is available in English and will be available in additional languages in the future and will be launched in tutored format in collaboration with interested HELP national partners (National Training Institutions and Bar Associations).

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