All private actors now have a responsibility to respect human rights. This is independent of the government’s own obligations and applies “over and above” local laws and regulations. Private sector entities meet their responsibility by conducting Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD).

HRDD is increasingly mandated and regulated by national and international law. Although it has a compliance aspect, it can be a powerful practical tool to strengthen relationships with rightsholders, increase knowledge, avoid conflicts, and improve outcomes.

Forum Nobis can help design and implement HRDD systems and interventions that deliver these additional benefits while meeting compliance requirements and remaining cost-effective. Specifically, we conduct field-based human rights screenings, human rights impact assessments (HRIAs), and other forms of risk analysis. We design HRDD or Environmental and Social Safeguards (ESS) systems, at the organizational level or on a project-specific basis. And we can provide related research, monitoring, mitigation implementation, and communications services.

After decades of hard work by rights groups, Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) is now widely recognized as a legal requirement for ay work impacting Indigenous lands and as a best practice standard for work with local communities generally.

Forum Nobis has been involved in the development and evolution of FPIC in legal, institutional, social, and academic forums for nearly 20 years. We are uniquely positioned to help both organizations and communities push the doctrine to the next level and adapt it to new contexts and complexities. We have advised on FPIC situations involving community opposition, conflict; community-led FPIC; landscape-level FPIC; FPIC contingent on future circumstances; FPIC involving legacy operations; and FPIC involving intergenerational equity concerns, among others.

Forum Nobis can help organizations co-design FPIC processes with communities; can facilitate risk screening, analysis, and dialogue, within the process; and can help develop and negotiate benefit-sharing agreements, consent agreements, monitoring plans, and other process outputs.

Grievance redress mechanisms are increasingly mandated by institutional funders, certification regimes, existing/proposed HRDD regulations, and international best practice. Mechanisms should be adapted to context, culturally appropriate, and meet the criteria in UN Guiding Principle 31 (legitimate; accessible; predictable; equitable; transparent; rights-compatible; a source of continuous learning; and based on engagement and dialogue).

These requirements can be daunting. Indeed, the extent of real-world implementation of grievance mechanisms in the private sector remains unclear. And the experience of communities with the mechanisms that do exist is often frustrating or even adds to the feeling of injury.

Forum Nobis can help organizations design and improve grievance mechanisms and related conflict resolution procedures, sometimes using our custom analytical tools and approaches. Forum Nobis can also facilitate community interaction with mechanisms, generally or as to specific concerns, serving as a liaison or ombudsperson. Forum Nobis can also serve as a mediator or assist with mediation.

People will have different views of the facts. Especially when the stakes are high, or when people feel their rights are under attack. Even in the most fraught situations, however, there can be moments of opportunity. A willingness to construct a shared narrative. A change in mood, where it becomes possible for an authoritative, fair-minded, compelling account of the facts to shift the debate to the next level, rather than just feed the fire.

Forum Nobis can help with public fact-finding processes, independent reviews, and internal investigations. Aaron Marr Page observed and assisted his first public fact-finding mission over 20 years ago, helping the Khoi-San people be heard by the South African Human Rights Commission. In private law practice with Forum Nobis and earlier at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, he assisted a variety of investigations and honed the key interviewing, evidence collection, documentation, analysis, and reporting skills necessary for the work. Forum Nobis is accustomed to working on matters with significant media attention and can assist in crisis communications environments.

The UNDRIP is having a revolutionary impact for Indigenous Peoples and has changed the landscape for collective rights generally. Rights to FPIC and participation are connected to the deeper right to self-determination, with profound consequences. Rights to territory, resources, culture, development, conservation, and more, are all recognized and put on the agenda. As many governments and organizations have learned, embedding respect for the UNDRIP requires a new approach to many existing relationships and practices.

Forum Nobis can help organizations understand and apply the UNDRIP, through independent analysis and by facilitating direct dialogue with rightsholders. Specifically, we can help adapt and revise policy and procedures, draft guidance and briefing papers (for example, see this UNDRIP-based Human Rights Guide), improve rightsholder engagement, conduct fieldwork, workshops, and trainings, and more. We also help communities ensure that they fully understand and are protecting their UNDRIP rights.

A community’s cultural property may include traditional knowledge (agricultural, medicinal, ecological, or other skills, practices, or know-how); traditional cultural expressions (art, music, dance, designs, names, signs and symbols, ceremonies, architecture); historical arts and heritage property; genetic resources (plant and human); and much more. This knowledge and property can be protected under a growing number of laws and standards.

Forum Nobis can help communities conceptualize, research, register, and strategically protect their rights. We work with the main traditional knowledge databases at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the USPTO. We can help with licensing, and with the development of monitoring, enforcement, and rematriation strategies. We help organizations avoid cultural rights infringement, and help projects and communities co-design safeguards and mitigation strategies.

There are now many, many petitioning systems, grievance and accountability mechanisms, complaints procedures, and other opportunities for affected communities to raise human rights claims. The UN, the regional human rights systems, the OECD, international institutions, multistakeholder initiatives, company-led mechanisms, more. The efficacy of these systems remains in question—and is also evolving with time and experience.

Forum Nobis can help communities and issue-based organizations learn more about the options. We can help formulate strategies, generate coalitions and media attention, and on a select basis may be available to provide representation within mechanisms.

Forum Nobis also has extensive experience litigating human rights issues in U.S. courts and advising on non-U.S. court litigation efforts. While this is no longer the central element of our practice, we may be available to provide expertise to supplement to an existing legal team, or to work on key law reform or compelling law reform or indigent defense cases. We also try to be available to communities to discuss legal options generally, make referrals, and support community-led efforts as members of the public.

We are seeing more and more attacks on human rights defenders each year. Why? Because as the power of the human rights framework grows, the threat to entrenched powers and prerogatives grows too. And because attacks on defenders can have a doubly oppressive effect, not only silencing the defender but also all the voices that the defender represents. Defenders, the gateways to realizing the promise of human rights, need our protection more than ever.

Forum Nobis can help human rights and environmental defenders who face assaults, retaliatory lawsuits, criminal charges, and other harassment and intimidation triggered by their advocacy. We have unique experience defending against some of the most sophisticated and multi-pronged attacks seen in recent years, and have worked in partnership with leading defender organizations such as the Environmental Defender Law Center and the Civil Liberties Defense Center.

Forum Nobis may also be available in particular circumstances to help organizations understand and respect any “bystander” obligations they may have to persecuted defenders in places where they work.

International law is the law of treaties, multilateral agreements, international institutions, customary international law, and the jurisprudence of international tribunals. It covers issues such as human rights, territorial boundaries, climate change, environmental protection, trade and investment, intellectual property, diplomatic relations, law of the sea, humanitarian law, international criminal law, international arbitration, and the law and practice of international institutions, as well as how all this intersects with domestic law and legal institutions. It is an enormously wide-ranging and complex field of law, with far more “real life” impacts than many people realize—yet the practice itself remains relatively small, highly specialized, and largely inaccessible to those affected.

Forum Nobis can help communities and organizations with research, advice, and, in very select cases, legal representation. Forum Nobis aims to offer international legal services on a pro bono or low bono basis to certain clients as part of its mission of promoting a more equitable and inclusive international legal discourse.