Investor Actions on the CHRB Engagement
Corporate Engagement
In 2019, the Investor Alliance, in collaboration with the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB), launched a coordinated corporate engagement to engage their portfolio companies who score poorly on the implementation of their human rights responsibilities under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). In particular, the investors targeted companies who repeatedly scored zero on five key human rights due diligence indicators. Today, the engagement involves:
267 institutional investors, from 18 countries, across 3 regions who support the CHRB investor statement;
Over US $7 trillion in assets under management;
Nearly 40 companies actively engaged; and
5 sectors: food and agriculture, apparel, extractives, ICT manufacturing, and automotive manufacturing.
Outreach to Companies
In 2021, investors joined forces to send an investor statement to a group of 106 of some of the world's most well-known companies, calling out their lagging human rights performance. Since then investors have been following up with companies who repeatedly perform poorly using data from the 2022 and 2023 CHRB benchmarks.
The investor statement calls on companies who have scored poorly, receiving zero scores on human rights due diligence indicators, to publicly demonstrate their respect for human rights in line with international frameworks like the UNGPs by conducting human rights due diligence to identify, prevent, mitigate, and account for how they address the most severe risks to people in connection with their business.
Investor Impact
In the 2022 Benchmark, our partners at CHRB found that of the ICT and automotive manufacturing and food and agriculture companies that scored zero on due diligence in the Benchmark, 72% of those actively engaged by investors in 2021 and 2022 improved their score on the Core UNGP indicators. Improvements were most noticeable for the ICT sector, where 100% of engaged companies improved their core social indicators score versus 45% of non-engaged companies. In the automotive sector, 75% of engaged companies improved their score on core social indicators versus 44% of non-engaged companies.
Collaboration with Civil Society
CHRB works closely with the Investor Alliance and participating investors, supporting investors in their company engagements with detailed data on companies' scorecards and analysis of trends within and across sectors, as well as geographically. Investors encourage companies to actively engage with CHRB resulting in increased engagement by companies on their human rights performance with CHRB.
The Investor Alliance also participates in the World Benchmarking Alliance's Social Collective Impact Coalition (CIC) on human rights due diligence (HRDD). The Social CIC brings together different stakeholders to push for greater uptake of HRDD through company action.
The Investor Alliance brings civil society organizations, academics, and experts to speak to investors and share information about HRDD good practices, for example, as part of the CR2R webinar series. The information provided aids investors in their dialogues to ensure that companies are progressing in meeting their human rights responsibilities.
Outreach to Policymakers
As part of the Social CIC, the Investor Alliance collaborates on policy briefs and submissions in support of legislatively mandated HRDD.