Benchmarking Human Rights Performance
Corporations may adversely impact rightsholders through all stages of their business operations and value chains. Specifically in high-risk sectors (apparel, food & agriculture, technology manufacturing, automotive manufacturing, and extractives) severe human rights violations are rampant; from forced labor and failure to respect communities' rights to discrimination and violations of rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining. Companies can impact any number of human rights and thus they need to holistically assess and prioritize addressing their greatest negative impacts.
Investors can influence companies to substantively address their potential and actual human rights harms by using their leverage to ensure companies implement robust human rights due diligence (HRDD) to effectively manage their human rights risks in line with expectations laid out in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). With strong HRDD processes in place, companies can get to a point where they are better situated to proactively avoid and prevent harms before they happen.
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How To Participate
The Investor Alliance provides a collaborative platform for investors to deepen their knowledge through engagement with civil society organizations and human rights experts and to participate in collective engagement initiatives with companies to address their corporate responsibility to respect human rights.
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What are the Risks?
Human rights due diligence (HRDD) is a key element in corporate respect for human rights. Without appropriate HRDD processes, companies cannot identify and address the risks they pose to rights-holders, such as children, women, indigenous peoples, and other vulnerable communities. To reach the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, companies must change their behavior and ensure they respect human rights throughout their value chains, as human rights and sustainability are inextricably linked. The Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB) compares the human rights performance of the largest and most influential companies in five high-risk sectors (apparel, food & beverage, technology, automotive manufacturing, and oil & gas), assessing the policies, processes, and practices they have in place to meet their human rights responsibilities and respond to serious allegations. CHRB's indicators are based on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs).
How are Businesses Connected?
Under the UNGPs, companies have the responsibility to undertake HRDD to identify, prevent, mitigate, and account for how they address their human rights risks and impacts connected to their own operations or through their business relationships. HRDD, along with a human rights policy commitment and provision of access to remedy, are the three cornerstones of the corporate responsibility to respect.
How can Investors Respond?
Investors are responsible for ensuring their portfolio companies respect human rights, including undertaking HRDD. Repeated zero-scores on HRDD-related indicators evidence a lack of attention by a company's board to its human rights risks. Collective investor leverage, enabled through coordinated corporate engagement, allows investors to target industry laggards to implement the policies and processes needed to improve their human rights performance and outcomes for rights-holders.