SERVICES
The Global Human Rights Centre (GHRC) provides a comprehensive range of research, advisory, and capacity-building services designed to advance human rights due diligence (HRDD) across agri-food systems supply chains. Our ten core service areas are outlined below:
EVIDENCE DRIVEN RESEARCH
At the Global Human Rights Centre (GHRC), evidence-driven research lies at the core of our work. We believe meaningful change in agri-food systems must be grounded in data, lived experiences, and context-specific analysis. Our rigorous, independent studies uncover systemic challenges such as labour exploitation, wage inequalities, land disputes, environmental injustices, and climate impacts. What sets us apart is our bottom-up approach: gathering insights directly from farmers, workers, and local communities. We transform this knowledge into policy briefs, advocacy strategies, and practical tools — ensuring evidence not only informs debate but drives accountability, resilience, and sustainable, just food systems.
HUMAN RIGHTS DUE DILIGENCE EXPERT CONSULTATION
The Global Human Rights Centre (GHRC) provides expert consultation to businesses, investors, and governments embedding human rights due diligence (HRDD) in agri-food supply chains. Grounded in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and aligned with frameworks like the EU CSDDD and OECD Guidelines, our services address labour exploitation, land dispossession, wage discrimination, and climate risks. We support clients in mapping supply chain vulnerabilities, aligning policies with international standards, designing grievance mechanisms, and meeting global compliance obligations. Combining legal expertise with field-based insights, GHRC ensures solutions are technically sound, socially legitimate, and drive sustainable, rights-respecting business practices.
Human Rights Risk Assessment
Human rights risks in agri-food systems are complex and interconnected, ranging from labour exploitation and child labour to land grabbing, wage inequities, gender-based discrimination, and climate vulnerabilities. The Global Human Rights Centre (GHRC) helps stakeholders anticipate and address these risks through comprehensive, evidence-driven assessments. Our approach combines supply chain mapping, risk scoring, and climate resilience metrics to uncover hidden vulnerabilities and prioritize urgent interventions. We then deliver tailored mitigation strategies that move beyond surface audits to tackle systemic drivers of harm. By blending technical expertise with field-based insights, GHRC provides credible, actionable guidance to strengthen resilience and safeguard dignity.
ADDRESSING GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE IN AGRI-FOOD SYSTEMS
Human rights risks in agri-food systems span the entire value chain, from farms to international markets, and include labour exploitation, child labour, land grabbing, wage inequities, gender discrimination, and climate-induced vulnerabilities. Left unaddressed, these risks undermine dignity, destabilize supply chains, and threaten long-term food security. The Global Human Rights Centre (GHRC) provides comprehensive assessments that go beyond audits, combining supply chain mapping, risk scoring, and climate resilience metrics. Our dual lens – technical expertise and field-based insights – ensures solutions are credible and practical. By identifying vulnerabilities and delivering actionable strategies, GHRC equips stakeholders to strengthen resilience and safeguard dignity.
GLOBAL HRDD TRAINING
Capacity building is central to GHRC’s mission of turning commitments into action. We deliver tailored training that equips businesses, governments, investors, and civil society with the tools to implement human rights due diligence (HRDD) in agri-food systems. Our modules address compliance with international frameworks like the UNGPs and EU CSDDD, risk identification and mitigation, gender-responsive approaches, and climate resilience. Delivered through workshops, online learning, and field sessions, our programmes are practical, context-specific, and sector-sensitive. By combining theory with actionable tools, GHRC ensures HRDD becomes embedded in daily practice – building food systems that are just, resilient, and sustainable.
ADVANCING GLOBAL HRDD IN AGRI-FOOD CHAINS
Agricultural supply chains span continents, making human rights due diligence (HRDD) both essential and complex. The Global Human Rights Centre (GHRC) works to harmonize standards across borders, bridging gaps between strong regulations and weaker enforcement. We convene global dialogues, align policies with trade and the SDGs, and create toolkits for cross-border supply chains. We also advocate for international cooperation to end exploitation and environmental abuses. By connecting global frameworks with local realities, GHRC helps build coherent systems that protect communities and foster sustainable trade.
BUILDING A CLIMATE - RESILIENT, JUST AND SUSTAINABLE FUTURE
The future of food systems depends on justice, sustainability, and climate resilience. The Global Human Rights Centre (GHRC) goes beyond compliance to help shape systems that nourish communities, sustain livelihoods, and protect the environment. We integrate human rights into climate adaptation and food security, promote inclusive markets for smallholder and women farmers, and align policies with the SDGs. Our advocacy advances reforms that balance growth, equity, and stewardship. By combining expertise in human rights, sustainability, and climate policy, GHRC builds pathways toward food systems that are equitable, resilient, and rights-based – serving as foundations for global equity.
SUPPORTING COMMUNITY IMPLEMENTATION OF THE HAND-IN-HAND INITIATIVE
Collaboration is central to GHRC’s mission. Through the Hand-in-Hand Initiative, our flagship platform, we bring farmers, communities, civil society, governments, and businesses together to co-create solutions across agri-food systems. The initiative ensures smallholder farmers, women, indigenous peoples, and rural minorities are at the heart of decision-making. We emphasize locally tailored solutions, grassroots knowledge exchange, and capacity-building programmes that empower vulnerable groups with skills in sustainable farming, financial literacy, and advocacy. By amplifying marginalized voices in regional and global forums, GHRC ensures collaboration is transformative — building inclusive, equitable, and climate-resilient food systems that uphold dignity and community well-being.
HUMAN RIGHTS APPROACH TO SUSTAINABILITY AND CLIMATE CHANGE
Climate change is one of the greatest threats to agri-food systems, disrupting production, destabilizing supply chains, and disproportionately impacting vulnerable farmers, women, and indigenous peoples. The Global Human Rights Centre (GHRC) integrates human rights into climate adaptation, ensuring solutions promote equity and justice. Our work documents climate impacts on rural communities, advocates for rights-based adaptation policies, and supports climate-resilient agricultural practices rooted in local knowledge. We also link climate justice with gender equality, ensuring women are central to adaptation strategies. By uniting sustainability with rights, GHRC builds food systems that are resilient, inclusive, and fair in the face of climate change.
RIGHTS OF RURAL MINORITIES
Rural minorities – including indigenous peoples, migrant workers, ethnic minorities, and marginalized farming communities – play a critical role in global agri-food systems. They are producers, land stewards, cultural knowledge keepers, and vital contributors to local food security. Yet, despite their importance, these groups are too often excluded from decision-making, denied equitable access to land and resources, and subjected to systemic discrimination.
The Global Human Rights Centre (GHRC) is committed to championing the rights of rural minorities and ensuring their full inclusion in the governance and benefits of agri-food systems. We recognize that sustainable food systems cannot exist while entire communities remain structurally marginalized.
Our interventions include:
- Advocacy for Equitable Land Access and Protection Against Land Grabbing
Land is central to both food production and cultural identity. GHRC advocates for secure land tenure rights for indigenous peoples and rural minorities, and campaigns against exploitative practices such as land grabbing and forced displacement linked to agricultural expansion or climate-related pressures.
- Legal and Policy Research to Challenge Systemic Discrimination
We conduct in-depth legal and policy analysis to expose discriminatory laws, practices, and institutional barriers that exclude rural minorities. Our research provides evidence for legal reform and policy advocacy, ensuring that national and international frameworks uphold the rights of marginalized communities.
- Amplifying the Voices of Rural Minorities in Global Policy Dialogues
Too often, rural minorities are left out of global conversations on trade, sustainability, and climate adaptation. GHRC works to bring their voices to international platforms such as the UN, ensuring that policy frameworks reflect the realities and priorities of those most affected.
- Partnering with Grassroots Organizations to Advance Cultural Recognition and Resource Rights
We collaborate with local organizations to promote cultural recognition, defend indigenous knowledge systems, and protect the resource rights of minority communities. By working in partnership, we ensure that advocacy is grounded in the lived experiences and aspirations of the communities themselves.
What distinguishes GHRC’s work is our focus on equity and inclusion. We believe that no food system can be sustainable if it excludes the very people who sustain it. By placing rural minorities at the centre of our work, we ensure that food security, sustainable development, and human rights are pursued in a way that leaves no community behind.
Through advocacy, research, and grassroots collaboration, GHRC helps build agri-food systems that recognize and respect the dignity, contributions, and rights of rural minorities – ensuring that they are not invisible participants in global food chains but equal stakeholders in shaping the future of sustainable agriculture.
- Skills Training Programs: In collaboration with local partners such as the Hon. Justice Innocent Umezulike Foundation, we have trained women in sustainable agriculture, entrepreneurship, and digital skills, enabling them to secure dignified employment.
- Policy Advocacy: GHRC has worked with governments to reform labor laws, ensuring fair wages and workplace protections for rural women.
- Research and Awareness: Through data-driven reports, such as our recent publication on “Gender Equality in Rural Labor Markets,” we provide actionable insights that inform policymaking and community programs.
- Commitment to Youth Engagement; GHRC has an active youth program, fostering leadership among young advocates who champion gender equality and sustainable development.
Social Impact
Over the past years, the fashion industry’s role in human rights violations has been increasingly attracting attention. From cancelling billions of dollars’ worth of clothing orders mid-pandemic to the discovery of labour exploitation in Leicester’s clothing factories, the industry has continued to make headlines for its unethical practices.
Social Impact
Over the past years, the role of human rights in business supply chains has been increasingly attracting attention due to exploitative and unethical practices which do not align with the 3 pillars of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights – Protect, Respect and Remedy.