Salon de Paris Club “Human Rights Due Diligence : A Rising Trend in Corporate Risk Management”

Corporations are coming under growing pressure from policymakers, investors and consumers to demonstrate their commitment to sustainable and responsible business practices, meaning ones that are respectful not only of the environment but also of human rights. Compliance with laws and regulations are necessary in that regards, but it is not sufficient anymore to protect corporations from reputational risks.

Human rights due diligence is a corporate risk management framework formalized in 2011 by the United Nations’ Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. This framework has gained in prominence in recent years, including in Japan where the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry issued in 2022 Guidelines on Respecting Human Rights in Responsible Supply Chains, while in the European Union a Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive is under discussion.

What are international standards and best practices in terms of respect of human rights by corporations? How can corporations identify, prevent and mitigate human rights risks in their own operations as well as in their upstream and downstream supply chains ?

Date & hour	Monday 18 March 2024 18h30-20h00
Place	Citron Seirin Building 1F/2F Minami Aoyama 2-27-21 TOKYO 107-0062 JAPAN https://citron.co.jp/access
Langange	Lecture in English, Q&A in English or Japanese
Price	Member 5,000JPY Non-Member 7,000JPY Please register by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, March 15 through the Paris Club website.
Capacity	30 persons
Co-organizer	CCIFJ

Romain Caillaud
Principal, SIPA Partners

Romain Caillaud is a risk and reputation management consultant with over fifteen years of experience providing public affairs and strategic intelligence services to corporations, law firms and nonprofits in Japan and Southeast Asia, with particular expertise in the technology, energy and manufacturing sectors. Currently located in Japan, Romain was based prior in Singapore and in Myanmar, and is originally from France.

Romain established in January 2021 in Tokyo, public affairs and strategic intelligence consultancy, SIPA Partners. He is an associate fellow in the Myanmar Studies Program at Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute), and a member of the Japan Committee of the Temple University Law School Compliance Advisory Board. Romain also is a 2023 Global Eisenhower Fellow.

Romain was earlier a senior director with a NASDAQ-listed multidisciplinary advisory firm, in its Tokyo and Singapore offices, where he led strategic communications and corporate intelligence teams across Asia. Notable mandates he oversaw in this capacity include advising a global technology firm on the development and implementation of its public policy and government relations strategy for Japan including intelligence gathering, issues analysis and stakeholder outreach; and advising a major Japanese manufacturing conglomerate on the management of a compliance, reputation and ethical crisis it faced having received allegations of modern slavery in its Southeast Asian supply chain. Romain also worked prior as a director with two Southeast Asia-focused government affairs consultancies.

Romain holds a Master in International Affairs from Sciences Po Paris, and a Bachelor of Arts in Southeast Asian Studies and Burmese Language from the French National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations. He also studied at Waseda University in Japan, Yangon University in Myanmar, and the University of Pennsylvania in the US. Romain is fluent in French and English, and conversant in Japanese and Burmese.