New agreement for cooperation with Mexico

Executive Director, Jonas Christoffersen, and the Foreign Minister of Mexico, Claudia Ruiz Massieu Salinas
The Danish Institute for Human Rights has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Mexico to develop the country’s National Programme on Business and Human Rights.

Executive Director, Jonas Christoffersen, and the Foreign Minister of Mexico, Claudia Ruiz Massieu Salinas, has signedthe MoU, during the Mexican presidential visit in Denmark in April 2016.

The Mexican Government publicly committed to developing a NationalProgrammefor Human Rights and Business at the UN Annual Forum on Business and Human Rights in November 2015. Danish Institute for Human Rights will help Mexico live up to this commitment.

The objective of the NationalProgrammeis to ensure corporate respect for human rights in Mexico. To achieve this, the NationalAction Programmeaims to strengthen mechanisms that ensure corporate respect for human rights; encourage companies to include human rights in their policies and codes of conduct; promote a human rights based approach to corporate social responsibility; promote legislation that ensures corporate respect for human rights; and help companies understand their obligations regarding human rights.

Expertise and experience

The Danish Institute for Human Rights’ (DIHR) expertise in the area of business and human rights is extensive. In particularDIHR has developed a toolkit incooperation with International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR). The DIHR-ICAR Toolkit on National Action Plans on Business and Human Rights establishes guidelines to help state actors integrate respect for human rights into the corporate culture, as well as making sure the legal and policy environment encourages greater respect for human rights by business.DIHR also have experience with supporting the National Action Plan processes of Chile and Colombia, as well as in Kenya.

Among other things, DIHR will aid Mexico in building the human rights and business capacity of government officials and members of the Multi-Stakeholder Working Group that has been established to support the process.DIHR will alsoadvise on the methodology for public consultations and on the production of the NationalProgrammeitself.