Entrepreneurship and Human Rights

Luxembourg’s commitment to the implementation of the United Nations guiding principles on business and human rights and the guidelines of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) will be continued and expanded by two new instruments that will complement the Business Partnership Facility (BPF) tool. These are the Challenge Fund tool and the Demonstration Projects tool, which will make it possible to approach the private sector in the Luxembourg Development Cooperation partner countries and countries with projects via an additional channel. The two new tools have been designed to mobilise the private sector in the Global South in relation to the sustainable development goals in their local contexts, through subsidies that will, among other things, be conditional on commitments to socially and environmentally responsible business conduct. In terms of monitoring these conditionalities, the Luxembourg national contact point (NCP) for the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises is supporting LuxDev in the design phase of the new co-financing tools. The two new tools were developed together with LuxDev in 2022 and their implementation is planned for 2023.

The Directorate for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Affairs has also participated actively in the work of the “Business and Human Rights” working group, responsible for implementing and monitoring the second national action plan on business and human rights (NAP 2), and in the interministerial committee responsible for defining the broad guidelines on the duty of care for Luxembourg companies. This was also an opportunity to coordinate in formulating Luxembourg’s position during the negotiations on the European directive in this field, tabled on 1 February 2022. This work, which is a concrete example of a strong commitment to policy coherence for development and the implementation of a human rights policy, will continue in 2023.