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August 24

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, 2020 To: Stacey Foreman Sustainable Procurement Program Manager City of Portland Via email:

 

stacey.foreman@portlandoregon.gov Dear Stacey, We at the American Friends Service Committee have been following the ground-breaking work done by your office with the hope of supporting it, learning from it, and eventually helping other cities around the country replicate it. We see a great opportunity right now to promote a new approach to public procurement, one that prioritizes companies that support our communities and our collective, shared wellbeing. The American Friends Service Committee is a 103-year old Quaker organization that promotes lasting peace with justice, as a practical expression of faith in action. We work with communities in over 45 locations across the U.S. and in 17 countries. My program is located in Oakland, CA, and it specializes in corporate research and CSR strategies for investors and advocacy groups with an emphasis on corporate complicity in human rights violations stemming from actions of state violence, such as: mass incarceration, mass surveillance, war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law, immigrant criminalization and detention, and the militarized policing of civilian communities. As part of this effort, we worked on responsible procurement and investment policies with faith organizations and universities, cities and foundations. Last year we were invited, along with other advocacy groups with presence in the Portland community, to participate in a series of open meetings and consultations about the proposed new Vendor Responsibility Questionnaire and Contractor Code of Conduct. As part of the feedback session on December 12

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, 2019, I shared a concern about the “labor and human right” section in both the Code of Conduct and Questionnaire, which focused solely on labor rights. In response, I was asked to offer the City suggested additions to both documents, to make sure they go beyond labor rights to include the wider scope of respect for all human rights. Human rights include a broad range of internationally accepted rights, including civil, cultural, economic, political, environmental, and social rights. They stem from the Universal Declaration

 

 

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of Human Rights and rely on a series of international treaties that ground human rights law. This wide scope makes it harder to create a list of specific Vendor Questionnaire questions which explicitly mention each and every one of these rights. Fortunately, we can use language already created by the U.N., the OECD, and the ISO, to codify corporate respect for human rights and provide guidance to corporations and governments in implementing this commitment. I offer below some additions to the Contractor Code of Conduct and to the Vendor Responsibility Questionnaire. In both cases, I have worked with an older draft of these documents, the one shared with us last year, and I apologize if these have changed since. Before going into specific suggested language for these documents, here are some general thoughts: 1.

 

In both the drafts I saw, the section about human rights does not address universal human rights at all, beyond a few specific labor rights concerns. This omission is harmful, as well as misleading. I believe that the proposed additions to both sections about the company’s general commitments to human rights and human rights due diligence are absolutely necessary, as they set the expectation for many of the following questions. I would propose reorganizing these documents to separate out the general human rights section, as human rights may include many of the other issues, and then list the specific concerns the City would choose to highlight, like labor rights, the environment, good corporate citizenship, etc. 2.

 

Another issue with the draft Questionnaire is that it might be too cumbersome already, both for small vendors without much administrative staff and for the City staff itself that needs to review all that data. It might be that all you need is a clear Code of Conduct, and a binding commitment by vendors to uphold that Code of Conduct, to report all relevant issues, and to follow a rigorous due diligence process. You can provide guidelines for such a process and require a periodic re-affirmation of these commitments from all vendors. This can work as long as there is an effective public dispute mechanism in place. Instead of committing to research in advance all possible issues with all vendors, the City would only require a very basic preliminary check of policy papers to approve vendors. If any subsequent concerns arise about any of the approved vendors, an effective public appeals forum, with community members and relevant experts, would review the accuracy of that company’s self-disclosure against any revelations of serious corporate malfeasance.

 

 

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3.

 

Finally, I suggest below two human rights concerns to be added explicitly and presented as priorities for the City, both to the Code of Conduct and to the Questionnaire: (a)

 

Because of the great emphasis on labor rights in the draft I saw, I suggest adding prison labor to the sections about coerced labor and child labor. Prison labor is similarly unfree and unprotected, but often not included in these categories. (b)

 

Another crucial issue often not considered a human rights concern (which it obviously is) is corporate complicity in the Prison and Military Industrial Complex, a rising concern for racial equity and immigrant justice. The questions suggested below do not require companies to step away from these industries entirely, but to include them in their human rights due diligence assessment and measure their complicity in any harm done. I realize that a lot might have changed in this project since the consultation sessions in the end of 2019. I hope that you might still find some of my suggestions below helpful, and in any case, I offer my assistance and support to you in this promising project. I would love to meet and further discuss any of this with you. Sincerely, Dalit Dalit Baum, Ph.D. Director, Economic Activism American Friends Service Committee 1730 Franklin Street, Ste. 201 Oakland, CA 94612 dbaum@afsc.org; 415-4009370 CC:

 

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