Advancing Racial Equity Through the UN Sustainable Development Goals

The urgency for racial equity is a clarion call for the legal profession. As legal practitioners consider how best to support this global movement, the FBA Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) Committee collaborated with the UN Global Compact to develop a comprehensive certified program for law students studying throughout the United States to promote understanding and action in addressing systemic racism. The program contextualized these efforts within the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework.

Offered free of charge over a period of three sessions, the program exemplified diversity in terms of race, age, gender, nationality, background, and focus areas. Co-badged along with the UN Global Compact Network USA and the UN Global Compact Network UK, it highlighted practical avenues for lawyers to advance the cause of racial equity, either in public-sector work within government or nongovernmental civil society organizations or in corporate work, either through a law firm or general counsel’s office. The program also looked abroad to recent and pending human rights legislation as a means to inform and amplify the racial equity movement.

Adopted in 2015 by every nation on the planet, the SDGs enshrine the enforcement of human rights and the promotion of equality and rule of law, articulating an ambitious 15-year achievement timeframe. While it is national governments that have committed to these objectives, private sector action is also envisioned. Drawing from this universally accepted agenda offers a comprehensive and quantifiable framework for tackling the issues that continue to disproportionately impact minority and impoverished communities throughout the world. For lawyers to advance the cause of racial equity, they need to understand how these objectives and their underpinning principles can guide progress for governments, businesses, finance, and civil society.

Public Sector and Civil Society
The first session, held on Oct. 9, 2020, showcased careers in civil justice. Hon. Nannette Jolivette Brown, chief judge, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, moderated the event titled “How Lawyers Can Contribute to Civil Justice,” and opened the program explaining that lawyers must seek an end to unjust practices and policies contributing to the systemic problems “embedded in the fabric of our nation.” A recent report compiled by the American Bar Association shows that minorities are poorly represented in the legal profession. Therefore, Judge Brown encouraged every member of the bench and bar to address this inequity, noting that it is an attorney’s obligation “to help our democracy evolve and improve so that we all live and thrive in the America our forefathers dreamed of and for which they planned.”

At the October 9 program, panelists with distinguished legal careers in the federal courts, the U.S. Department of Justice, state governments, and NGOs discussed a range of opportunities for lawyers to influence policy and the justice system and to initiate impact litigation challenging laws or policies that unfairly target minorities. They also offered useful advicefor law students interested in pursuing public-sector careers.

Panelist Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan, senior counsel at LatinoJustice PRLDEF, emphasized how important. it is for law students to develop the skills necessary to “embody the change you want to see,” and suggested students avail themselves of “Know Your Rights” or “Movement Law Lab” training. Clinics and internship placements can also help students “show up to this historical moment.” These work experiences offer opportunities to understand the law as it relates to equity issues. Participating in student chapters of the National Lawyers Guild, which works on issues such as the school-to-prison pipeline, or training to serve as a legal observer to ensure the right to peaceful protest represent additional paths toward developing meaningful experience, according to Bannan.

Nevertheless, Bannan acknowledged the contradictions of marginalized communities needing to seek justice through a legal system that has been historically hostile to them. She urged the legal community to engage in deep thinking about how to evolve the system to address this tension.

Panelist Professor Lawrence Baca emphasized the importance of representation. Drawing from his rich but often troubled experience as the first Native American lawyer hired into the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, he described the solitude he sometimes felt as the only minority present in the courtrooms in which he practiced. Being a “first” or “only” brings outsize pressure to those breaking barriers, Professor Baca explained, and he suggested that lawyers who find themselves in this role should focus on recruiting minority attorneys and inspiring them with examples of progress. In-person school recruitment, including attendance at various law school association meetings, offers the best chance of drawing applicants, in Baca’s experience. Also crucial is supporting fellow minority attorneys in their pursuit of leadership roles within the profession. Professor Baca’s activities with fellow bar members, and certainty that his work could improve lives, helped make him resilient to the challenges of racial bias and discrimination he encountered during his career.

Pro bono support is another crucial avenue for correcting racial inequity. Panelist Kristen Clarke, president of the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, explained that her organization draws on the private bar to pursue litigation supporting a fairer justice system, enhanced voting rights, fair access to housing, equal education opportunities, and the protection of peaceful protest. Founded in 1963 at the height of the protest movement that led to the Civil Rights Act, the Lawyer’s Committee is facing a similar moment in our fight against racial injustice. Clarke pointed to the COVID-19 pandemic as an amplifying factor that heightens the need to address the digital divide in education, voter registration challenges, unemployment and homelessness among minority populations, prison overcrowding, and reduced access to criminal counsel as but a few of the issues the National Lawyers’ Committee is working to address through its vast network of over 200 attorneys providing pro bono legal assistance.

Panelist Karl Racine, attorney general of the District of Columbia, cited a foundationally biased and discriminatory justice system as the cause for the disproportionate arrest, prosecution, and punishment of minorities. Bannan echoed this view, explaining that the law wasn’t designed by or for minorities and urged a thorough examination of the legal system’s complicity in perpetuating racial injustice. Indeed, these communities have often been on the other side of the law, which provides, she believes, important context for the social justice movement now. Attorney General Racine added that this systemic inequity also underpins longlasting educational and economic discrimination.

But the role of attorney general is pivotal and can drive reform through, for example, its handling of police-brutality prosecutions. In Racine’s office, he has focused particular attention on transforming the juvenile justice system from one that is punitive to one that is rehabilitative and reactive to the underlying needs of young people through services that are trauma-informed. As the recently elected president of the National Association of Attorneys General, he aims to combat hate in all its forms, tackling its causes through education programs and persuading member-attorneys general to pledge that hate has no home in their jurisdictions.

Opportunities for Private Sector Impact
Lawyers who choose to practice in the corporate or law firm setting can also contribute to this cause through their role as trusted advisors to corporate America. Indeed, the business and service sector represents nearly 90 percent of global GDP and 74 percent of worldwide employment, and this sector’s resources offer leverage for driving progress. Moreover, corporations are increasingly focused on engaging on these issues, and the program’s October 23 second session, “How Fiduciary Duty Can Be a Force for Change—The Role of the Lawyer in Advancing the SDGs,” explored corporate efforts around racial equity and human rights and how law firms and corporate general counsel divisions can contribute to this effort.

Moderator Adam Roy Gordon, engagement director for the UN Global Compact Network USA, explained that his organization offers support to attorneys adapting to the changing context of business. Indeed, macro-pressures such as international human rights legislation, increased transparency and disclosure requirements, activist litigation, and consumer demand are transforming business strategy, as are the desires of job recruits who seek a shared-value approach to their professional lives whether they use this terminology or not.

Understanding this, corporations are considering these issues not just through a separate corporate responsibility function, but by incorporating human rights practices into their core strategies. Panelist Tim Wilkins, global partner for client sustainability and a corporate and M&A partner at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, said that nowhere was this more evident than in the corporate statements responding to the deaths of George Floyd and Brianna Taylor. Wilkins identified the social bonds undertaken by Alphabet and Coca-Cola that were inspired by these protests and explained that these corporations will use this financing to increase their investment in and skilling-up of Black-owned businesses and suppliers. This interest in supplier diversity embodies a shift in corporate purpose from the Milton Friedman doctrine of the 1970s that “the social responsibility of business is to increase profits” to, as Wilkins explained, a multi-stakeholder approach which appreciates the interests not just of shareholders, but of suppliers, employees, consumers, and the communities in which an enterprise operates.

General counsel divisions must also advise their companies about the potential reputational, financial, and operational risks associated with negative human rights impacts. As program panelist Jaren Dunning explained, his role as senior counsel for PepsiCo requires him to not “just say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ but ‘should we?’ and ‘how should we?’” For PepsiCo, that means going beyond legal compliance to evaluating whether an action or decision meets the spirit of the business’s core objectives. Consequently, his fiduciary duty to PepsiCo obligates him to evaluate, manage, and mitigate PepsiCo’s human rights risks.

To do this, advisors often look to both the SDGs and its complementary framework, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (“Guiding Principles”). The Guiding Principles, endorsed by unanimous vote of the Human Rights Council in 2011, identify the role of the private sector in understanding, preventing, and mitigating its human rights impacts. As panelist Ariel Meyerstein of Citi explained, these principles draw on the legal obligation of due diligence. In his role as senior vice president of corporate sustainability, Meyerstein asks business clients probing questions about their human rights records and commitments.

Meyerstein explained that he uses the Guiding Principles as a normative framework for discussions around the corporate duty to protect, respect, and remedy human rights, ensuring that the businesses he works with understand that these obligations extend throughout their global supply chain. He also advises clients seeking the social and sustainability bonds that finance specific initiatives to ensure that the targets associated with this financing are sufficiently ambitious and achievable.

Diversity and inclusion practices sit at the heart of racial equity, and corporations are grappling with their sometimes dismal records. But Wilkins sees business as increasingly reflective on the racial makeup of the voices that contribute to strategic decisions. He believes it’s an exciting time, with lawyers able to advance this agenda in ways that would have been “unimaginable even a few years ago.”

And corporations are demanding diversity in-kind from the law firms they engage. Some even cut fees when firms fail to provide a sufficiently diverse team. Wilkins explained that the voices of counsel must connect to the core business strategy of its clientele, and a diverse legal team is an important way to achieve this.

Wilkins further explained that the use of diversity targets and disclosures must extend beyond new hires to retention and promotion. Measurement and disclosure expose areas of inequity and offer powerful tools for lasting change. Wilkins sees annual reviews as a time to hold managing attorneys accountable for their diversity and inclusion efforts both within the firm and externally. “Solutions that transfer wealth and influence from people in senior positions to those who have struggled to access these offer the best hope,” he says. Meyerstein supports this view, noting that radical transparency around racial pay gaps, such as those undertaken by Citi, help drive efforts to improve representation.

Nevertheless, according to Dunning, sustainable corporations need to be thoughtful about how to build on their existing efforts. At PepsiCo, the summer 2020 protests prompted self-reflection about its hiring and training practices as well as its broader equity goals, including gender parity, since inequities can “sometimes compound themselves.” Externally, Dunning said, they considered whether they were “sufficiently engaging their minority-owned suppliers and nurturing that component of their value chain.” Finally, the company evaluated its advocacy role to see if there were ways they could engage in the political process. As a widely known brand, he sees PepsiCo as having an opportunity to show consumers the future “we want to fight for.”

Dunning believes every lawyer can make a positive impact no matter what their role, but that they should be guided by their own personal interests. He recommends asking, ‘What questions do I want to answer?’ as a guide for involvement. Gordon echoed this view. “There’s room for this type of sustainability discussion no matter where you are in the marketplace.” But it’s the younger, newer voices that, from Wilkins view, are most critical in how we rethink equity issues. Wilkins sees the remote work necessitated by the pandemic as an opportunity to advance equity discourse. Because videoconferencing permits “everyone on a call to have an equal footprint,” new ideas and voices are being listened to in ways they weren’t before. He believes, and Gordon concurs, that this creates an opportunity for young lawyers in particular to move the organization toward discussions they care about.

An International View on Human Rights
International human rights efforts are increasingly guided by the SDG agenda, which November 13 session moderator and executive director of UN Global Compact Network UK Steve Kenzie explained, “has achieved extraordinary global consensus.” Kenzie noted that the SDGs reflect a “leave no one behind” ethos, which is why, according to panelist Julie Kofoed, head of human rights at the UN Global Compact, 92 percent of the goals—even its environmental targets—are grounded in human rights concerns.

In Kofoed’s work with the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative, she urges members to prioritize remedying their most severe human rights impacts first. Nevertheless, she expressed concern about the gap between corporate aspiration and action in this area, citing that while 90 percent of the UN Global Compact’s signatories have human rights policies in place, less than 15 percent of these businesses are actually doing human rights assessments and taking action on the results. There’s clearly much more work to do. Kofoed encouraged law students to educate themselves on the SDGs, including racial inequities, and to raise awareness within local communities, advocating within law schools for courses and programs on the SDGs and human rights.

But regulation is also a crucial tool for progress, and the program’s final session, “The Legislative Horizon—An International View of Human Rights Protections,” offered students a glimpse into the laws enacted in or percolating through numerous jurisdictions, as well as the approaches and debates guiding these regulations.

Panelist Roger Leese, partner and co-head of Clifford Chance’s Global Business and Human Rights Practice, noted the distinction between “soft” and “hard” law. While the SDGs and Guiding Principles are “soft,” in the sense that they have no direct binding effect on businesses, they can still serve as the basis for corporate policies or governmental regulations, which is increasingly the case, he noted, citing several legal trends. The first is legislation around corporate transparency and reporting, which force businesses to publicize their actions around human rights in the hope that peer and consumer pressure will force corrective action. He identified the UK Modern Slavery Act of 2015, which aims to tackle the 25 million victims of modern slavery worldwide, as an example of this approach. Leese argued, however, that with little enforcement, compliance has been poor, and he indicated that the legislation is under review.

According to Leese, frustration with this market-based approach has led to legislation such as France’s Duty of Vigilance Law requiring mandatory corporate due diligence for human rights violations throughout a business’s global supply chains. The European Union is considering adopting similar legislation, but with further consideration being given to penalties for noncompliance, such as injunctions or criminal prosecution. Finally, Leese described a treaty approach with civil and criminal penalties for corporate failure to respect human rights. As requirements become more concrete, businesses are increasingly appreciating their need to act, which is a key development from Leese’s perspective. And it’s the attorney’s job to educate her clients by highlighting the risk of inaction. At Clifford Chance, when onboarding new clients where human rights issues are likely to arise, they will obtain the client’s advanced agreement to accept advice for remedying abuses, leveraging resignation should a client fail to comply.

Of course, lawyers must be vigilant not just to corporate but also governmental abuse of human rights. Panelist Steven Feldstein, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the Democracy, Conflict and Governance Program, described how state use of emergent technologies, such as artificial intelligence and surveillance, can lead to the exploitation and manipulation of citizens. His research shows sharp degradation of protections of individual rights and liberties across all governance systems, including liberal democracies, over the course of the past decade, accelerating considerably during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Feldstein cited the need for legislation in this area to balance freedom of expression and disinformation. In the United States, internet platforms are currently immune from liability for the content that is posted. But legislators are rethinking this approach, aware of the proliferation of extreme and hate speech that can exacerbate racial discrimination and inequity. The assumptions underpinning the “marketplace of ideas” approach to free speech have been turned on their head by social media, according to Feldstein, and can negatively impact the very political process that supports protected speech and human rights. Feldstein also identified the tension between data privacy and surveillance, recognizing that, while regulators have a legitimate interest in the need to track and monitor criminal or conspiratorial behavior, they must also ensure individual rights.¹ 

Corporations play a role in this debate as well, since many technology business models rely on the personal data of their users. Many governments have foisted responsibility for resolving these tensions onto the private sector, said Feldstein. However, some jurisdictions are beginning to grapple with these complex issues. In the area of data exploitation, the European Union has introduced the General Data Protection Regulation. This development shows how, as Feldstein noted, “the sharpened angles of this debate are coming to the fore.” The pandemic, Feldstein observed, is only “putting a finer edge on these debates,” due to valid public health goals being undermined by broad use of citizen data for law enforcement or other governmental objectives. In addition to creating a troubling precedent, he worried that citizens would become inured to data collection, which may lead to even further exploitation. He predicted that in the coming years, both governments and businesses will need to rethink the interaction between data privacy and business and governance models using algorithmic exploitation.

Panelist Safaath Ahmed Zahir, founder of Women & Democracy, noted the need for any new legislation to take an inclusive approach. Her organization, which is based in the Maldives, provides feedback on bills, policies, and initiatives prior to  implementation, including those regulations that have arisen during the pandemic. While her work is focused on gender equity, Zahir believes “gender and racial inequity are inseparable.” Her organization raises awareness and advocates for increased female participations in the political systems that create regulation. The downward trend of female involvement in Maldives’ Parliament highlights institutional barriers to entry. So Zahir’s work empowers women in political, party, and parliamentary leadership through public-speaking and campaign-strategy workshops that have reached over 600 women. Her organization also educates about human rights. This approach is also relevant to the racial equity movement. Zahir noted that expectations are higher when those who are marginalized finally do manage to obtain leadership positions, a view echoed by Judge Brown and Professor Baca. Zahir urged students to nevertheless be relentless in removing the institutional barriers of gender, class, ethnicity, race, educational background, and faith traditions that impede positive social change.

Conclusion
Leadership in this moment means rejecting complacency and pursuing bold, ambitious action. As both law firms and their clients face increased legal, financial, employee, customer, and societal scrutiny, lawyers must seize this moment to lead. From legislation to litigation, organization to education, activism to influence, lawyers can draw on their problem-solving skills to effect change. And as trusted advisors to the business community, lawyers can use their influence to “help our clients do the right thing,” Leese said. Indeed, Meyerstein believes that lawyers should view themselves as ethical compliance officers. And ethics must have racial equity and human rights at its core. As Zahir noted, “we know how far we’ve come, so we can see how much further we have to go.”

Many thanks to my co-chair, Mimi Tsankov, who participated in her capacity as board of directors liaison to the D&I Committee; our FBA advisory board, including Wylie Stecklow, Bryan Branon, Brandi Burris, Lanna Allen, Stephanie Moncada Gomez, and Helen Padilla; and all the distinguished moderators and panelists who participated in this ground-breaking program.

Endnotes

¹  Numerous amendments to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act have recently been introduced to Congress.

About the Author

Christina Bartholomew is a London-based American attorney, university educator, and founder of Stories Evolved (www.storiesevolved.com), a sustainability training and education consultancy. She has organized and moderated numerous panel discussions on diversity and inclusion in collaboration with the University College London and developed a certified university course on Business and the Sustainable Development Goals in partnership with the UN Global Compact Network UK. She is certified in Business Sustainable Management by the University of Cambridge Institute of Sustainable Leadership.

About the FBA

Founded in 1920, the Federal Bar Association is dedicated to the advancement of the science of jurisprudence and to promoting the welfare, interests, education, and professional development of all attorneys involved in federal law. Our more than 16,000 members run the gamut of federal practice: attorneys practicing in small to large legal firms, attorneys in corporations and federal agencies, and members of the judiciary. The FBA is the catalyst for communication between the bar and the bench, as well as the private and public sectors. Visit us at fedbar.org to learn more.