Human Rights Procurement Motion for Councils

Dear Councillors

Can you please bring this procurement motion on human rights and international law to Dublin City Council?

"This Council deplores corporate profit from protracted armed conflict and systematic violations of human rights. With this motion, the Council seeks to encourage companies to meet their obligations to avoid contributing to adverse human rights impacts through their own activities, and to prevent or mitigate human rights abuses linked to their operations.

The Council is aware of the crucial role of local authorities and their public procurement procedures in ensuring respect for human rights by companies, as well as their obligation under widely accepted business and human rights norms – as laid down in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises – to promote respect for human rights by companies with which they do business.

This Council :

1.) calls for implementing the UN Guiding Principles in the ‘belief that the promotion of business, and the respect for human rights, go hand in hand’ and includes the following in the list of actions to ‘reinforce its implementation of its commitments’ under the UN Guiding Principles: - 18 (iii) Continue to ensure that Irish Government procurement rules allow for human rights-related matters to be reflected in the procurement of public goods, works and services, taking into account the 2014 EU Public Procurement Directives and guidance on compliance with wider international obligations when letting public contracts.

The Council recognises the right of local authorities like this Council to exclude from public contracts companies that are implicated in grave professional misconduct, including grave human rights abuses, war crimes and/or violations of international law.

The Council appreciates that tender bids are to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, and that no bidding company must be excluded from this Council’s tenders or contracts because of its geographical scope of activity, sourcing location, national identity, or origin.

This Council resolves to adopt an Ethical Procurement Policy (EPP) that takes into account the involvement of bidders and members of its economic entity in violations of human rights and/or international law and allows the Council to exclude problematic bidders from its tender procedures. The EPP will incorporate widely accepted and precisely formulated international norms and standards of business and human rights to explain clearly when exclusion from tenders is justified."