Human rights as enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, are individual rights that accrue to all human beings regardless of social status.
There are many reasons a business would want to uphold human rights as part of its business model and practices. Firstly, it enhances the reputation of the business with stakeholders. These include potential employees, clients, investors and others.
A business can gain a competitive advantage simply by upholding human rights as a business practice.
On the other hand, businesses that abuse human rights are likely to turn away customers.
A business that upholds human rights may be better able to attract investors than businesses that do not. A class of investors known as value driven investors invest in business that have a good impact on human rights.
At times, investors will ask to review your human rights policies before they can make an investment. If you want to attract value driven investors, a good way is by upholding human rights.
Upholding human rights may also attract talent and staff. A business with a good human rights record is more likely to attract qualified staff than one without.
Fair labour practices and human rights are virtues that may lead to staff retention. Upholding human rights means that there is less risk in terms of lawsuits.
At times, upholding human rights is synonymous with legal compliance. Legal compliance minimises litigation risk.
Human rights in Kenya are mostly contained in the Bill Of rights in the Constitution. One is the right to equality and freedom from discrimination as contained in Article 27.
The right provides that all citizens are entitled to equal treatment and should not be discriminated on grounds of race, gender, age, religion, physical disability and others.
Despite the existence of this right, discrimination happens on a large scale by businesses. Many businesses have a lot of discriminative practices whether directly or indirectly. There are many examples where businesses flout this right.
One is in unfair labour practices, where the business as an employer engages in discriminative practices against potential and existing employees.
A good example is tribalism during recruitment or recruiting staff with a particular political leaning and so on.
Another is when they discriminate their customers based on certain indexes, for example race. A Nairobi restaurant faced a lot of social media backlash when it was accused of racism in its service.
The restaurant apparently discriminated against people of black origin. It faced such a huge backlash that it had to issue a public apology.
How can a business uphold Article 27 of the Constitution? First is by doing an honest analysis of current practices and determining which ones may be discriminative.
Two is to educate all staff especially management on Article 27. Thirdly is by drafting an equality and non-discrimination policy that shows commitment to upholding the right. This policy can be posted on the website.
Fourthly the business needs to embed Article 27 into all its practices, processes and operations. Where possible draft standard operation procedures that ensure this right is upheld. It is good for the business to be transparent and communicate its policy statement to the public.
In the event of past incidences of discrimination, then the business ought to take full responsibility and take some remedial measures, for example issuing public apologies and compensation where it may have flouted anybody’s rights.
Ms Mputhia is the founder of C Mputhia Advocates. Email: [email protected]
