All private actors now have a responsibility to respect human rights, including core environmental and participation rights. This applies “over and above” local laws and regulations. Private sector entities meet their responsibility by conducting Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD) or Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence (HREDD).

HRDD is increasingly required by national and international law. Although it has “compliance” and risk managements aspects, it is actually a great tool for building relationships, connecting with local knowledge, and avoiding conflicts and related distractions and inefficiencies. Core HRDD guidance encourages “leaning in” to human rights risk by recognizing that some level of risk is inevitable, that issues can be prioritizes for attention, and that mitigation efforts should be scaled to match the scope and nature of the enterprise.

Forum Nobis can help organizations design and implement HRDD systems aligned with these reasonable expectations and designed to deliver broader benefits. We conduct field-based human rights screenings, human rights impact assessments (HRIAs), and other forms of risk analysis. We design Environmental and Social Safeguards (ESS) systems and tools, at the organizational level or on a project-specific basis. We can help communities fully engage in the HRDD process, track standards and progress, design preferred mitigation options, and protect their rights generally.

Robust rightsholder engagement is a core element of HRDD and Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) is a widely recognized legal requirement, under national law and international human rights law, for any work that impacts Indigenous lands, resources, cultures, or interests. FPIC plays a key role in the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) and is a lodestar of best practice for work with all local communities. FPIC is best understood as a baseline element of the foundational, multi-dimensional UNDRIP right to self-determination.

We have worked on the development and evolution of FPIC and UNDRIP standards in legal, institutional, social, and academic forums for decades. We understand that the key next stage is effective implementation, especially in complex scenarios that involve disputes between and within communities, that require extensive knowledge sharing for genuinely informed consent, that operate at landscape-level scale, that involve issues of future risk or intergenerational equity, that advance community leadership, and others.

Forum Nobis can help organizations co-design FPIC processes with communities, conduct preliminary screenings, and facilitate processes that build trust while reaching outcomes in a timely and efficient manner. We can help communities understand and protect their FPIC and UNDRIP rights, build baseline knowledge and capacity, negotiate benefit-sharing agreements, design implementation and monitoring plans, and more.

Our years of experience tell us that genuine human rights protection over the long term depends less on technical knowledge/policies and more on our deeply human habits and practices of trust, teamwork, and support. We also know the value of conflict, within teams, between organizations, and in relationships with rightsholders and other stakeholders, including government. Conflict acknowledges presence, care, and purpose, and “good trouble” puts a spotlight on what matters most. We need strategies to de-escalate "high conflict" and unsafe behavior, but also the wisdom to draw trust, knowledge, and momentum for change from a broader process of conflict recognition and regulated, not just a rush to resolution.

Using professional resources, we offer a portfolio of creative facilitation practices and exercises, including movement and somatic practices, to illustrate and embed our unique support and trust-based approach to human rights and conflict work. We respect the need to move at the speed of trust, but also include awareness of time and resource constraints and prioritizations needs within our facilitation work.

Forum Nobis can help organizations build trust and effectiveness in their human rights teams, and safely recognize, reguylate, and resolve conflict within the org and between partners and communities. We also design Grievance and Remedy Mechanisms (GRMs) that satisfy accountability requirements while delivering deeper relationship-building and knowledge-generation benefits. We can help communities effectively engage with orgs and GRMs, including serving as ombuds or mediator in appropriate circumstances.

New technologies are often quickly framed as new threats to human rights. This is often true, but superficial. New technologies are an evolving front of both risk and realization opportunities. Our access and equity rights to technology are increasingly among the most important rights we have, and the line between those and negative impact rights is increasingly elusive.

We study, teach, publish, and practice at the intersection of tech and human rights. We understand that successfully co-evolving these critical forces requires interrogating our assumptions of technological determinism—rejecting any binary opposing access to tech and enjoyment of human rights. We are intimately familiar with the unique rights impact scenarios emerging from generative AI, mass data collection, privacy rights, content moderation, biotechnology ethics, earth science systems, regulatory gaps, and equity and access issues.

Forum Nobis can help technologists embed human rights considerations into design, scaling, and implementation stages of diverse technologies. We can help communities identify and advocate for their rights beyond superficial impacts, leveraging access, equity, and participation arguments to preserve and promote self determination, dignity, and technology solutions to serve their own self-determined interests.

The UNDRIP enshrines numerous rights to culture, resources, knowledge, and identity. There are growing systems of legal protection for traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, cultural heritage property, and genetic resources. But increasingly, the realization of these rights requires understanding (and leveraging) them as data and access rights within rapidly evolving global system and technological practices and platforms.

“Indigenous technology” must be understood not just as traditional technologies themselves, but as the set of rights needed to protect Indigenous culture and self-determination in light of new pressures and opportunities. Basic assumptions about how culture and identity are processed/exploited by systems and practices are due for re-examination under the lens of Indigenous self-determination and cultural sovereignty.

Forum Nobis can help communities protect their culture and data rights, including basic registration, licensing, and protection actions available under the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and others; property rematriation strategies; benefit-sharing arrangements; monitoring and enforcement systems; and more complex more strategic conceptualization of data sovereignty and technology needs in service of self-determination. We can help organizations ensure their their activities and relationships are consistent with these evolving standards.

Efforts to mitigate/adapt to the impacts of climate change and to transition to renewable energy at scale are an increasingly significant component of development finance and global economic activity generally. Like previous economic transformations including the development of global supply chains, this could lead to a new generation of human rights impacts and related social and political turmoil. Or, we can do better, building human rights and equity principles into the design, standards, and implementation of climate response. 

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.

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.