New Project: Support to assess human rights impacts along the tourism value chain

The Roundtable is developing an exemplary and practice-oriented online “blueprint”-tool for tour operators on how to conduct a value-chain based social risk assessment in a destination. The tool trains and guides companies through the process of the human rights impact assessment (HRIA) methodology. The blueprint will be integrated in the “Get-Started” tool on the Roundtable’s website, and will be openly available. 

The  “blueprint” tool will consist of

• Guidelines, supporting documents and transferable tools for (small and medium sized) tour operators to conduct a value-chain based social risk assessment in a tourism destination.
• Training and capacity building for internal understanding of tour operators (RT members) to enable them to systematically assess potential and actual human rights-related impacts of their business operations in the selected destination;
• Step-by-step guidance through the process of a destination specific risk assessment for tour operators with the aim to develop and implement an action plan for follow-up measures based on the impacts identified.

The interactive “blueprint” tool follows a step-wise approach that is aligned with existing methodologies in the context of human rights impact assessments (HRIA), and guided by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and the Implementation Guideline for Tour Operators on Human Rights in Tourism developed by the Roundtable Human Rights in Tourism.

The developed blueprint will be tested on its usability, functionality and logical construction by conducting an exemplary social value-chain assessment in Thailand and Myanmar in September 2019. The two parts of the project are very closely linked and complement each other. 

There will be two webinars on the project that are open for all interested stakeholders. 

The project is supported by the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ), the Swiss Federal Department for Foreign Affairs (FDFA) as well as Roundtable members, business and non-business partners.