Protecting Human Rights in Supply Chains

Date: Tuesday, March 11, 2025

Time: 6-7:30 pm (Eastern)

Vanderbilt Hall 216 and on Zoom

About the event:

The promulgation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in 2011 helped focus attention on the need for companies to develop responsible and sustainable approaches to business activities, including their distant supply chains. More than a decade later, severe human rights violations such as forced labor still persist. Meanwhile, new challenges have emerged in the form of climate change and political pushback to a human rights agenda. A distinguished panel of experts will discuss what investors, corporations, NGOs, and government policymakers in the US and Japan are doing now to fulfill their responsibility to protect human rights in supply chains.

About the speakers:

Noor Hamadeh is advocacy counsel at the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR) where she focuses on advancing US legal safeguards against corporate abuse in United States supply chains, including through strengthening existing forced labor and human rights enforcement mechanisms and advocating for mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence legislation. Prior to joining ICAR, Noor founded and headed the Human Rights & Business Unit at the Syrian Legal Development Programme. She was also a non-resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, where she contributed to policy advocacy around business and human rights in the Middle East.

Hideaki Roy Umetsu is managing partner of the New York office of Mori Hamada & Matsumoto. He specializes in cross-border M&A and investment and has extensive experience in advising Japanese companies about business and human rights issues. He has advised a number of Japanese clients on establishing appropriate global compliance programs and conducing or assisting internal investigations and implementing preventive measures.

Kazuko Ito is founder and vice president of Human Rights Now, president of Human Rights Now New York, and an attorney at law. She serves as chair of the Gender Equality Committee of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, and is a board member of the Gender Law Society and International Human Rights Law Society in Japan. Ms. Ito has written numerous books and articles on human rights issues, including “Wrongful Convictions and Criminal Justice Reform in Japan” in the University of Cincinnati Law Review and a chapter in the book “The Global Me Too Movement: How Social Media Propelled a Historic Movement and How the Law Responded” (2020). She has an LL.B from Waseda University and is currently a doctoral researcher there. Ms. Ito was a visiting scholar at NYU School of Law in 2005.

Akiko Sato is a Japanese lawyer and business and human rights specialist currently based in Bangkok. She is a member of the steering committee of the Business and Human Rights Lawyers Network Japan and the Business and Human Rights Working Group of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, and has participated in projects of the UNDP and Human Rights Now. She holds an MA in development studies from Erasmus University Rotterdam and a JD from Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo.

About the moderator:

Bruce Aronson is senior advisor to the Japan Center of the U.S.-Asia Law Institute and an adjunct professor at NYU School of Law. He has been a tenured professor of law at universities in the United States (Creighton University) and Japan (Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo). Before beginning his academic career, he was a corporate partner at the law firm of Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP in New York. He also served as an independent director at Eisai Co., Ltd., a listed Japanese pharmaceutical company. Professor Aronson twice received Fulbright grants to be a senior research scholar at the University of Tokyo and at Waseda University, and was a visiting scholar at the Bank of Japan. His main area of research is comparative corporate governance with a focus on Japan and Asia. Publications include a textbook, Corporate Governance in Asia: A Comparative Approach (with J. Kim, Cambridge University Press, 2019).