Building a fairer future for all through human rights law

Freya Dinshaw works at the forefront of the corporate accountability movement in Australia, and has over a decade of experience specialising in the field of business and human rights. She is an Associate Legal Director at the Human Rights Law Centre, where her work focuses on exploring opportunities for deploying advocacy, strategic litigation and international mechanisms to challenge the treatment of marginalised communities by governments and companies.

She is a member of the Australian Government’s Modern Slavery Expert Advisory Group, the Australian OECD National Contact Point Governance and Advisory Board, and a steering committee member of the Australian Corporate Accountability Network and Global Initiative for Corporate Accountability.

Describe your career trajectory and how you got to your current position.

Like many others, I started my career in in a corporate law firm and quickly settled in the disputes practice. However, I was very lucky that towards the end of my law degree, I ended up taking a subject that required me to write a thesis on any topic relating to international law, and a lawyer at the firm suggested I write about a recent case on whether companies could be held liable for human rights abuses under the US Alien Tort Statute. I became hooked on this notion that there was a real question mark as to whether powerful companies operating across the world could face legal liability even for egregious abuses. It’s still the question that drives so much of the work I do now.

I was also fortunate that the firm I worked at had a leading business and human rights advisory practice, and alongside my regular commercial disputes work I had the opportunity to advise companies on their emerging obligations to respect human rights, and how to incorporate this responsibility into policy and practice in order to ensure that people were being protected from harm. I reviewed early modern slavery statements, undertook human rights risk assessments, and advised clients on tricky situations where companies were torn between staying in a business relationship to try to improve conditions, or disengaging and leaving the people most at risk behind in the process.

My passion for the area led to me undertake a master’s program in the UK, followed by a researcher role focused on business and human rights at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law. After a brief stint working in international arbitration, I returned to Australia and after a couple of years joined the Human Rights Law Centre as a Senior Lawyer working on refugee rights.

The first year at HRLC was intense, due to the crisis in offshore detention where children were trapped in worsening conditions on Nauru, families were indefinitely separated between different processing facilities and medical detention in Australia, and the Coalition government at the time was firm on its policy of stopping the boats despite the human cost. I learnt an immense amount from our clients and incredibly talented campaigners and lawyers around me, working on the Kids off Nauru, Families Belong Together, and Medevac campaigns.

Now in my current position, I work with communities and colleagues from across the business and human rights movement in Australia and abroad. Our focus at the moment is on reforming Australia’s modern slavery laws, and ensuring that Australian companies respect the rights of people in their operations and supply chains wherever they operate.

What drives you to do the work that you do?

At its heart, my work is about addressing inequality, from the deep colonial structures that drive exploitative practices in many parts of the world, and of course the relationship between money and power. My own family history is profoundly affected by the impact of colonialism and I see the opportunity to promote standards and guardrails for how people around the world should be treated when it comes to multinational business activity as one way to address long standing imbalances in power.

If you could go back in time, what piece of advice would you give yourself as you first embarked on your career?

Embrace every learning opportunity you get in the workplace, and always look to sharpen your tools – you never know when something will come in handy. I absolutely hated rotating through transactional construction work as a junior lawyer, yet the skills I gained in negotiation and legal drafting have been so useful as a human rights practitioner working on law reform.

Any words you live by day to day?

I’m partly Zoroastrian by background, which is the world’s oldest religion. Its main
message is ‘Think good thoughts, say good words, do good deeds’, which is pretty solid advice.

What are you currently watching / reading / listening to?

Standstill, by Sashi Perera. She’s a refugee rights lawyer turned comedian, and I’m really enjoying her memoir so far.