My name’s Chris. I’m a freelance journalist and this site is all about the link between business and human rights.

Through the wonders of the global supply chain the ecological inter-connectedness of all things is becoming more and more apparent to more and more people. People are genuinely shocked when they discover their mobile phone fuels a war in DR Congo, their chocolate relies on child labour or their UK raised beef destroys indigenous land in South America.

Something I’ve only really just woken up to is that there’s no human rights section to mainstream media. There are business sections and post climate change environmental sections. But nothing dedicated to human rights. Why? Ah, leave that question for another time.

So this site is something of an attempt to plug that hole. It’s currently very much in Alpha phase, with me just depositing data and information into it. Beta will come when genuine commentary and newsfeeds start and .. well we shall see what we shall see thereafter.

However there’s one thing I want to make clear right from the very start: I’m not a bleeding heart ethics driven human rights nut. To me this is a question of sustainability: misusing and abusing human beings is just as great an act of idiocy as polluting and destroying natural resources.

I’m also a traditional political liberal .. which in short means I believe you can do anything which is not specifically forbidden; in other words I support “black lists” of what you cannot do, not “white lists” of what you can.

So this site is not about promoting a set of rights (UN endorsed or otherwise) which all people have, because that is a “white list” approach. Nor is it about ethical promotion or anything of that ilk.

It’s about trying to show transparently what the affect of individual and corporate purchasing descisions are around the World. Nothing more, but hopefully nothing less. For now though, let’s just start at the beginning…