Vision – Indago

Indago is born with the aim of building a society where business enterprises respect human rights, States have in place the rules and mechanisms to enforce this responsibility to respect, and people are informed about how the companies that supply them with products and services behave.

Indago works for a future where all economic actors respect the international human rights standards. In this desired reality, business enterprises are responsible and accountable for their direct and indirect human rights impacts in any part of the world.

Society is increasingly calling on companies to respect human rights. This public demand has led to legal developments and to the surge of the social and solidarity economy (SSE). Nonetheless, the number and severity of the reported and verified human rights violations linked to corporate activities (specially to transnational enterprises) is still overwhelming.

In this context, Indago provides the instruments to achieve the following objectives:

Public opinion consciousness about the problems, factors and possible solutions regarding the respect of human rights by all private economic actors

Progress in the application of the human rights based approach (HRBA) by public decision-makers to public procurement, public tendering processes and to public aid granting

Consumers and users’ full access to mechanisms and tools to obtain comprehensive and rigorous information about the human rights impacts linked to the entire life cycle of products and services

Companies’ access to systems to identify, prevent, mitigate and account for their human rights impacts

We understand International Human Rights Law as the legal framework that defines the duties and standards shaping the companies’ responsibilities to respect human rights. It thus amounts to the benchmark against which the companies’ degree of observance with this responsibility will be measured. In other words, our vision is of a world where under no circumstance shall respect of human rights be considered voluntary.