Abstract
The business sector has a strong direct and indirect impact on children, at the workplace, on the marketplace, in the community, and through the supply chain, where risks arise in terms of endangering children and their rights. This paper aims to provide new evidence of the impact of the business sector on children's rights in Serbia. The analysis of the impact of the Serbian business sector on children's rights was carried out through cabinet research of three sectors identified as a priority based on their influence on the economy and children's rights - ICT, food and agriculture, and financial sector. After interviews with managers responsible for corporate social responsibility in the leading companies from these sectors, their potential impact on children's rights has been mapped together with sectoral risks, while opportunities for shared-value engagement between businesses and organizations and institutions supporting children and their rights were extracted. Our research suggests that shared value in the context of the promotion of children's rights goes far beyond traditional corporate philanthropy, and audits how core business operations, assets and practices, advocacy initiatives, skills, and know-how can support children's rights in achieving Sustainable Development Goals.
Highlights
Human rights are relevant to the economic, social, and environmental aspects of corporate activity (Sinha, 2013)
Several business sectors in Serbia were empirically analysed, which UNICEF globally selected in view of their direct intersection with children’s rights and/or potential to amplify the reach through core assets (UNICEF, 2018a)
The other tier, Tier 2, includes Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Equipment, Tourism, Textile, Retail Trade, Media, Sports, and Toys sectors, which can be selectively engaged in certain areas that cause children deprivation or bring about opportunities for enhancing children’s rights
Summary
Human rights are relevant to the economic, social, and environmental aspects of corporate activity (Sinha, 2013). The research has focused on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and its effectiveness; international soft-law mechanisms, such as the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), and the ethical and moral argumentation of profit-driven companies being assigned social obligations. Human rights protection is nowadays an integral part of CSR activities (Obara and Peattie, 2019), children’s rights protection is often neglected. CSR has become an essential component of today's business strategy for most companies (Lahtinen, Kuusela and Yrjölä, 2018), while the business sector's impact on children's rights is still relatively unclear, ungoverned and unresearched, especially in Serbia (Krstić, 2018). When assessing the role and the impact of the business sector on children’s rights, academic research is predominantly focused on topics such as child labour and exploitation, gender inequality, and ethics of advertising toward children (Carlson and Clarke, 2014).
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