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Strengthening capacity of civil society in Tanzania and Kenya to influence business and human rights affairs

Strengthening capacity of civil society in Tanzania and Kenya to influence business and human rights affairs

News

1 July 2016

SOMO is heading a project in Tanzania and Kenya to strengthen capacity of local actors and communities to deal with human rights abuses by business enterprises, and to promote the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in East Africa. The project unites civil society organisations and National Human Rights institutions in their efforts to induce business respect for human rights: the Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR), Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR), Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC), the Commission on Human Rights and Good Governance (CHRAGG) in Tanzania, and Business and Human Rights Tanzania (BHRT).

What do we want to achieve? This project aims to empower civil society organizations and communities to make use of grievance mechanisms to tackle the negative effects of business operations they experience, and to ensure that they have the skills to continue doing so in the future. At the national level, this project is helping to establish forums for multi-stakeholder dialogue to promote a reform agenda for business and human rights. At the regional level, it aims to facilitate lessons-learned exchanges and promote collaborative actions toward solving common challenges in the business and human rights domain in throughout East Africa.