Around the world, business and human rights are under growing pressure. The pace and scale of change are unprecedented: rising authoritarianism, intensifying conflicts, and increasing social movements are disrupting markets and reshaping the landscape in which European and American companies operate at a level probably not witnessed since the Cold War.
These shifts not only expose vulnerable communities to greater harm, they create significant new human rights risks for companies, placing greater pressure on businesses to anticipate, mitigate, and respond through robust due diligence.
The United States is a key case in point. Long considered a lower-risk operating environment, the U.S. is now showing clear signs of democratic backsliding and a significant erosion of civil liberties.
And these shifts are not just political. Given the country’s economic power and global influence, they have far-reaching implications for human rights in global value chains. And businesses must pay attention.
But before we explain why businesses must closely monitor human rights risks and impacts in the U.S., let’s take a closer look at the country’s declining human rights environment.
What’s the State of Human Rights in the U.S.?
The U.S. has long positioned itself as a global defender of human rights and democratic values. While that perception has never been universal, it’s now clear that the U.S. is experiencing a steady decline when it comes to the state of human rights, with repercussions both home and abroad.
Domestically, government crackdowns on protests, particularly those supporting Palestinian and migrant rights, and increasingly aggressive immigration enforcement, including raids, mass deportations, and family separations constitute clear violations of human rights, destabilizing communities across the country.
At the same time, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs have been defunded or dismantled in several states, with growing pressures on academic institutions and businesses to scale back or suspend their DEI activities. Similar political pushback has been directed at environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives, forcing many companies operating in the U.S. to consider renaming DEI and ESG teams and downplaying their activities to avoid political scrutiny.
Internationally, the U.S. has abruptly cut more than 90% of its foreign aid contracts and withdrawn from key multilateral institutions and treaties, including the UN Human Rights Council, the World Health Organization, and the Paris Climate Agreement. These moves have forced NGOs and UN agencies to suspend operations, putting hundreds of thousands of lives around the world at risk. Meanwhile, the enforcement of key federal corporate accountability laws, such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, has been paused or deprioritized.
These developments are only some of the actions taken by the current U.S. administration that undermine human rights and the rule of law. It is clear that the U.S. is becoming increasingly autocratic, less democratic and less free.
In March 2025, the U.S. was also added to the CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist, a global index that tracks threats to civic space and democratic freedoms, as a country with a “narrowed” civic space, with potential for further deterioration.
What Does the Weakening State of Human Rights in the U.S. Mean for Business?
The erosion of human rights in the U.S. has direct implications for companies operating in, sourcing from, or otherwise linked to the country. Companies may be surprised to find the U.S. increasingly identified in risk analyses as a medium- or even high-risk context for certain human rights issues. This change in risk levels necessitates a change in due diligence practices.
Businesses might feel the effects of the changing human rights context in multiple ways:
Consider the example of child labor. While the use of child labor is not new, recent years have seen a surge in detected violations with the Department of Labor reporting an increase by 37% in 2022 compared to the previous year, and by a staggering 283% since 2015. But this spike is not simply due to a rise in actual cases. It reflects a growing awareness of legal gaps that leave children—particularly migrant youth—unprotected. If you operate in the agriculture or food and beverage industries with production in the U.S., this is a signal to pay special attention to child labor risks in your supply chain.
(For more insights on this issue and practical recommendations for companies on addressing child labor in their value chains, read our 2024 report “Child Labor in the United States“, co-authored with The Centre for Child Rights and Business here.)
Forced labor, particularly in the form of prison labor, must also be on the corporate risk radar. Legally permitted under the 13th Amendment’s “punishment clause,” prison labor is a potential human rights risk in sectors like agriculture, manufacturing, and public services in the U.S. Restrictive immigration policies and mass deportation of migrants by the current U.S. administration have reduced the pool of available migrant workers, incentivizing the use of prisoners (and alarmingly, children) as replacements to fill labor gaps. Both state and federal-level prison labor programs (such as UNICOR) benefit U.S. government agencies and their contractors as well as private companies including some major clothing and food brands that have been linked to U.S. prison labor in the past. Incarcerated workers earn far below minimum wage. A recent example was California’s use of prisoners as firefighters during wildfires, where prisoners were paid just cents per hour, far below California’s $16.50 hourly minimum wage. (For an on-site interview with incarcerated firefighters, watch this video by Hasan Piker.) Given the rising risk of forced prison labor in the country, companies operating in or sourcing from the U.S. should pay special attention to any risks of forced prison labor in their supply chains. (I thank Andrea Shemberg for highlighting the risk of forced labor in the U.S., which is now reflected in this article.)
Another at-risk group is migrant workers. Given their fragile legal status, they are under heightened risk of being detained at the workplace, held in custody for extended periods, or deported without their families’ or employers’ knowledge. This threat of deportation increases migrant workers’ vulnerability to exploitation, including wage theft, sexual harassment, violence, and other abuses. If your operations or supply chains involve a migrant workforce —whether employed directly or through suppliers —, you should assess the specific situation, seek leverage and adopt appropriate measures to respect the rights of migrant workers. This is an urgent and critical issue where using your leverage as a buyer, investor or customer can ensure that your company is not contributing to human rights violations of an increasingly vulnerable group in the U.S. For practical tips on how to ensure your human rights due diligence prioritizes those most at risk, read the CORE Message series “Why Due Diligence Must Center Vulnerable Groups”: Part 1 and Part 2.)
In response to growing anti-DEI rhetoric and policy shifts of the U.S. administration, many businesses are downplaying and deprioritizing their diversity and inclusion teams and activities. While this may appear to be a strategy to avoid political scrutiny, it should not, in practice, put LGBTQIA+ individuals and communities at a greater risk of discrimination, harassment and exclusion. In the current climate of heightened human rights risks, companies have a heightened responsibility to identify, prevent and mitigate risks to, and engage meaningfully with, vulnerable groups, including LGBTQIA+ individuals present in their own operations and their supply chains. To read more about how companies can foster diversity and promote a culture of respect and equality, take a look at the Standards of Conduct for Business: Tackling Discrimination against Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and Intersex People published by the OHCHR.
What Should Companies with Operations or Supply Chains Linked to the U.S. Do?
Companies are not neutral actors. They have a responsibility to respect human rights wherever they operate. That includes identifying, preventing, and addressing adverse human rights impacts. Businesses must respond to these concerning developments in the U.S. with the same level of scrutiny they would apply in any other context with severe human rights risks.
Effective human rights due diligence is risk-based. The U.S. may not have been previously identified as a high-risk context in your human rights due diligence. But if your company has business relationships in the U.S., the rapidly changing human rights and conflict dynamics in the country should prompt you to review and update your current risk assessment accordingly. This will necessitate strengthening your understanding of the evolving context and ensuring that your activities do not contribute to adverse human rights impacts, also when those impacts are caused or enabled by or linked to government policies.
Effective human rights due diligence is ongoing. Headlines in the U.S. change by the minute. The individuals, groups, and communities under attack shift. One crisis escalates, de-escalates abruptly, and another one follows. The pace of change in risk levels and at-risk groups is unprecedented. Navigating such a volatile political and regulatory environment is challenging for all actors in society. That’s why a proactive and agile approach to due diligence and a regular, ongoing due diligence practice including ad-hoc and event-related risk assessments are more needed than ever.
Effective human rights due diligence is proportional. This means that the higher the risk, the more complex the due diligence processes must be. Where risks of conflict, discrimination, or abuse are rising or where the enforcement of human rights laws and standards are weakening, companies have a responsibility address these heightened risks in their due diligence.
This includes:
- reassessing the human rights context in the U.S.,
- reviewing business relationships and identifying links to actual or potential adverse impacts on human rights in the U.S.,
- engaging with affected stakeholders including vulnerable groups and most importantly embedding their perspectives in corporate due diligence practices,
- collaborating with suppliers identified to be at a high-risk of being targeted by U.S. government’s discriminatory policies,
- increasing leverage and building alliances with peers by engaging other companies navigating similar challenges in the U.S. context,
- adapting internal policies and procedures to prevent risks and mitigate potential impacts,
- adopting measures to prevent potential adverse impacts and mitigate those that have occurred, for example by establishing channels for rightsholder to submit grievances or conducting a human rights impact assessment, and
- updating assessments periodically.
In high-risk environments, companies must regularly monitor developments including the state of human rights in the area, build human rights capacity and conflict sensitivity among internal stakeholders and leadership. Forming a cross-functional taskforce with competent leaders from relevant teams and engaging business partners and colleagues whose roles are based in or involve the relevant high-risk issues or areas will help act upon identified risks and impacts in an appropriate and effective way.
Operating in an increasingly polarized and rights-eroding environment poses a serious challenge for companies committed to responsible business conduct.
Yet, where there is a disconnect between national policy and international human rights norms, businesses can come up with creative, principled ways to uphold their commitments, using their leverage to maintain and strengthen rights within their spheres of influence and their networks to collaborate with like-minded peers and other stakeholders to ensure human rights are respected across their value chains.
At CORE, we support companies in developing strategies and ad-hoc and event-related risk assessments to ensure their business activities to not cause or contribute to human rights violations. If you are looking to assess your human rights risks and impacts in the changing U.S. context, get in touch: hello@peopleatcore.com.
Serra for the CORE team
