Business & Human Rights Resource Centre: Home

Sumi Dhanarajan

Sumi Dhanarajan is a trustee of the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre.

From 1998 to 2008 Sumi was the Head of the Private Sector Team at Oxfam GB, the international development organisation addressing poverty issues worldwide.

Based in Singapore since August 2009, she is an independent consultant specialising in the field of business, human rights and sustainable development.  Recent assignments include a research fellowship on the Public Roles of the Private Sector at the Centre on Asia and Globalisation at the National University of Singapore.  She is the Regional Adviser for East/Southeast Asia to the Institute for Human Rights and Business, serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Human Rights Practice (Oxford University Press) and Development in Practice (Kumarian Press), and sits on the Steering Committee for BASESWiki, an initiative under the mandate of the UN Special Representative on Business and Human Rights to document non-judicial grievance mechanisms for resolving disputes on corporate-related human rights harms.  She also serves on the Advisory Board of Responsible Research, a firm that conducts research on responsible investment in Asia for institutional investors.

Sumi’s publications include:

• Business and the Millenium Development Goals, co-author Penny Fowler, Briefings for Business Series (Oxfam GB, 2008)

• Investing for life: Meeting poor people’s needs for access to medicines through responsible business practices [PDF] by Helena Viñes Fiestas with Sumi Dhanarajan et al. (Oxfam International, 2007) 

• “Faster, Longer, Cheaper: The nexus between poor labour standards and supply-chain management in the apparel industry” (European Retail Digest, Fall 2004)

• Play Fair at the Olympics [PDF] (Oxfam International, ICFTU, Clean Clothes Campaign, 2004)

• “Multinational companies and ethical issues” in Macdonald, Tuselmann & Wheeler, International Business Adjusting to New Challenges & Opportunities (Palgrave, 2002)

• Managing ethical standards: when rhetoric meets reality [PDF] (Development in Practice, 2005)

• The impact of patent rules on the treatment of HIV/AIDS in Thailand [PDF] (Oxfam GB, 2001)

She has previously served as a trustee for the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, on the Board of Directors of the Ethical Trading Initiative, and as a research adviser for the Human Rights & Business Project (International Council for Human Rights Policy).

Sumi was educated in Malaysia, Singapore and the UK.  In 1994 she worked as Human Rights Officer for the Malaysian Bar Council.  From 1995 to 1997 she worked as Senior Legal Officer for the Democratic Party of Hong Kong at the Legislative Council.  Sumi became a barrister in the UK in 1997.  In 1998 she received an M.A. in Understanding & Securing Human Rights, at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London.

Peter Frankental

Peter Frankental is a trustee of the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre.

He is Economic Relations Programme Director at Amnesty International UK and Chair of the Corporate Responsibility (CORE) Coalition, UK.  Previously he was Economic Relations Strategy Adviser at Amnesty’s International Secretariat.

Peter joined Amnesty International in 1998 from Business in the Community, where he specialised in developing the role of the private sector in social and economic regeneration programmes.  His previous career included six years as a business analyst with Johnson Matthey and four years as a systems analyst within the National Health Service.

Peter’s first degree was in Mathematical Statistics.  He subsequently undertook postgraduate studies at the London School of Economics (MSc Econ) and the Institute of Latin American Studies (MA).

Peter is a founding trustee of two organizations in the refugee field – Music in Detention which delivers music workshops in immigration detention centres, and the Helen Tetlow Memorial Fund which provides small grants to refugee organizations.

Peter is co-author of “Human rights – is it any of your business?”, a management primer on human rights jointly published in April 2000 by Amnesty International and the International Business Leaders Forum.  He has published numerous papers on the theme of business and human rights including, “Can Branding Reinforce Human Rights?”, published by Financial Times Prentice Hall in “Visions of Ethical Business”.

Dr. Menno Kamminga

Dr. Menno Kamminga is a trustee of the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre.

He is Professor of Public International Law at Maastricht University (Netherlands), where his courses include public international law, international human rights law, and international dispute settlement.  He also serves as Director of the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights.  The Centre's research covers a wide range of human rights issues both at the domestic and the international level, including the universality of human rights, and the indivisibility of all human rights, i.e. civil and political rights as well as economic, social and cultural rights.
 
Menno is a former Legal Adviser and Representative at the United Nations of Amnesty International (1978-1986), and a former (Senior) Lecturer in International Law at Erasmus University Rotterdam (1987-1999).  He chairs the Netherlands Government’s Advisory Committee on International Law and is a member of the Netherlands Government’s Advisory Committee on Human Rights.  He is a former member of the International Executive Committee of Amnesty International (1994-1999) and a member of the Board of Editors of the Netherlands International Law Review.  He has published widely in the field of international law, including books on state responsibility for human rights violations and liability of multinational corporations for human rights abuses.

Menno is co-editor (with Saman Zia-Zarifi) of Liability of Multinational Corporations under International Law (Kluwer Law International, 2000), co-editor (with Martin Scheinin) of The Impact of Human Rights Law on General International Law (Oxford University Press, 2009) and co-editor (with Fons Coomans and Fred Grünfeld) of Methods of Human Rights Research (Intersentia, 2009).

His degrees include an LL.M. from Groningen University (1973), an MA from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (1974) and a Ph.D. from Leiden University (1990).

Ulf Karlberg

Ulf Karlberg is a trustee of the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre; he is Chair of our US-based non-profit and Co-chair of our UK-based charity.

Ulf was founding Chair of the Amnesty International Swedish Section Business Group, and continues to serve as an active board member of that Group.  The Amnesty Sweden Business Group works to promote respect of human rights internationally by the business community, and does so through its approaches to companies, government officials, trade unions and non-governmental organisations.  Under Ulf’s leadership, the Amnesty Sweden Business Group published a special Swedish edition of the book Human Rights: Is it any of your business?, with case studies from major Swedish multinationals.  (The initial management primer was published by Amnesty UK Section and International Business Leaders Forum.)

He is an international business executive who has been a member of Amnesty International since his days as a student in the early 1970s.

From 1989 to 2000 Ulf was a senior executive with Astra Pharmaceuticals (now AstraZeneca).  As Executive Vice President he was responsible for Astra’s companies in Japan, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico.

Previously he had worked at PA International Consulting Group; as their Chief Executive for Western Europe (1984-89), and as a management consultant and Managing Director of their Sweden office (1973-84).

Ulf was educated in Sweden at the University of Lund and University of Gothenburg, where he received his business degree.

Chris Marsden OBE

Chris Marsden is a trustee of the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre; he is Chair of our UK-based charity.

He is also Vice-Chair of the Institute for Human Rights & Business, which he was mainly responsible for establishing.  The Institute provides a trusted space for experts from companies, governments, NGOs and academia to deepen understanding of specific human rights challenges and the appropriate role of business.

From 2001 to 2007, Chris was Chair of the Business Group of Amnesty International UK.  The Business Group sought to persuade transnational companies to promote human rights both through their own business activities and through the influence they can bring to bear on host governments in countries where they operate.

In July 2004 Chris wrote: "Dealing with Joel Bakan’s Pathological Corporation: A strategy for campaigning human rights and environmental NGOs".  Earlier he wrote "Participating in Governance: the Social Responsibility of Companies and NGOs" (in New Academy Review, spring 2003)

Chris also teaches business ethics and corporate citizenship to MBA students and on executive programmes.  He is Visiting Professor at the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (ENPC School of international Management) in Paris, for whom he has designed and taught ‘Business in Society’ MBA modules in Paris, Morocco, Japan, Abu Dhabi and Belgium.  He is Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Corporate Responsibility at Cranfield University, where he also teaches.  He is a Board member of the European Academy for Business in Society, based in Brussels.

From 1981 to 1996 he worked for BP, initially as educational relations manager and latterly as head of community affairs.  From 1992 to 1996 Chris was responsible for promoting and networking BP's community activities around the world.  In 1996 he produced BP’s first international report on its community relationships, a process which has now developed into full-scale social reporting.  

For ten years he was Chairman of Hertfordshire's Education Business Partnership.  He was also a trustee of the Community Education Development Centre and President of the Economics and Business Education Association.  He was awarded the OBE in 1989 for services to education and industry.

From 1968 to 1980 Chris had a career in education.  This included teaching economics in both the maintained and private sectors and being the deputy head of Beaumont School, St Albans, an 11-18 comprehensive school in Hertfordshire.  He has an economics degree from Cambridge. 

Dr. Mila Rosenthal

Dr. Mila Rosenthal is a member of the Board of Directors for the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre's US-based non-profit.

Mila is the Executive Director of HealthRight International (formerly Doctors of the World-USA), a global health and human rights organization working to build lasting access to health for excluded communities.  Prior to joining HealthRight Intl. she was Deputy Executive Director for Reseach and Policy, Amnesty International USA, and Director of Amnesty International USA’s Business and Human Rights Program.

Mila was previously the Director of the Workers Rights Program at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (now Human Rights First), and researched labour conditions in textile factories in Vietnam for her PhD in social anthropology from the London School of Economics. She was a consultant in Vietnam on rights-based issues to organisations including OXFAM and UNICEF; served as Director of the NGO Resource Project in Phnom Penh, Cambodia; and worked to build Cambodian civil society for UNTAC, the United Nations peacekeeping operation in Cambodia.

Mila has written extensively about the social impact of globalisation.

Adrian Stockman

Adrian Stockman is a trustee and treasurer of the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre. 

Adrian is Director of Resources (covering Finance, IT and Human Resources) for Build Africa, a £2 million overseas development charity that works with communities in East Africa to help them lift themselves out of poverty through education and agri-business projects.  He is a chartered accountant with 20 years’ experience as a Finance Director in the commercial and not-for-profit sectors.

Prior to his post at Build Africa, Adrian spent 6 years as Financial Controller at Amnesty International UK and he remains a member of Amnesty.  Additionally, he served for 5 years as trustee and treasurer of the Fairtrade Foundation, a charity whose main emphasis is ensuring that producers of commodities are paid a price that supports a decent standard of living.

Melvin Coleman

Melvin Coleman is a Senior Adviser and former treasurer of the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre.

He is UK Finance Director of Amnesty International and is a member of its Senior Management Team with responsibilities for Finance, IT, and Company Secretarial and legal matters.  He was a member of the international committee devising Amnesty International’s strategic plan for the period 2004-2010, and also sits on the task force studying the method of funding the organisation’s international budget.

A member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (CA), he graduated in law from Glasgow University, winning the Glasgow Juridical Society prize.

After qualifying with Ernst & Young, his career has taken him from North Sea oil to publishing and thence into the not-for-profit sector where he has held senior positions at Consumers’ Association (Which? Magazine), Engineering Industry Training Board and the Performing Right Society.

He is a founder member of the first publicly funded Law Centre in the UK and still acts (33 years later) as accountant, treasurer and Secretary to its Management Committee.  He was Treasurer of the Public Law Project – a small, strategic charity developing public law remedies for disadvantaged people – and was Treasurer of the civil liberties/human rights organisation Liberty in the 1980s.  He is also involved in a variety of bodies representing the voluntary/charity sectors and was recently elected a Trustee of the Charity Finance Directors' Group.

John Elkington

John Elkington is a Senior Adviser and former trustee of the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre.

Founder & Chief Entrepreneur at SustainAbility, based in London and New York, John is a leading authority on sustainable development and triple bottom line business strategy. 

John is also the Founding Partner & Director of Volans Ventures, a company that works globally with entrepreneurs, businesses, investors and governments to develop and scale innovative solutions to financial, social and environmental challenges.

In 2008, The Evening Standard named John among the ‘1000 Most Influential People’ in London, describing him as “a true green business guru,” and as “an evangelist for corporate social and environmental responsibility long before it was fashionable.”  He has spoken at several hundred conferences throughout the world.  In 1989, he was elected to the UN Global 500 Roll of Honour for his ‘outstanding environmental achievements’. 

Since 1974, John has undertaken consultancy work for a wide range of national and international government and non-governmental agencies, including Greenpeace International, IFC, IIED, OECD, UNEP, USAID, WRI and WWF.  He has worked for corporate clients such as Anglian Water, BAA, BP, BP Chemicals, British Airways, British Telecom, Cargill Dow, Dow Europe, Ford Motor Company, ICI Group and ICI Polyurethanes, IBM, Manweb, Monsanto, Nike, Norsk Hydro, Novo Nordisk, Procter & Gamble, Shell, Sita, Unilever and Volvo Car Corporation.

John is also Chair of The Environment Foundation; Chairman of UK Export Credits Guarantee Department; a Visiting Professor at the Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility at the Cranfield School of Management; Member of the International Board, Instituto Ethos, Brazil; and a Member of Dow Jones Sustainability Index Advisory Board.

He is the author or co-author of over 30 books and published reports, including the No.1 best-selling Green Consumer Guide.  His book Cannibals With Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business (Capstone Publishing, 1997) was a finalist in the 'Global Business Book of the Year Award’, organised by the Financial Times and Booz Allen Hamilton.  He has written hundreds of articles for newspapers, magazines and journals, and was Editor of Biotechnology Bulletin from 1982 to 1995, producing over 170 issues.  He contributes a regular column to Nikkei Ecology magazine and has been a contributor over more than 20 years to The Guardian.