Business Recognition of Human Rights: Global Patterns, Regional and Sectoral Variations

The resolution establishing the SRSG’s mandate asks him to identify and clarify standards of corporate responsibility and accountability with respect to human rights. This request was not confined to legal standards that may impose direct or indirect obligations on companies, but was also meant to include the realms of social expectations and moral obligations. A key indicator of the latter consists of the human rights standards that business itself adopts, triggered by its assessment of human rights-related risks and opportunities in the social and political environments in which it operates. This report summarizes the human rights standards referenced or invoked by a cross-section of companies, collective initiatives, and socially responsible investment funds.

The present study complements the SRSG’s survey of the human rights policies and management practices of the Global Fortune 500 (FG500) companies. 1 But it differs from that survey in three important respects. First, it is based on actual documentation of such policies and practices rather than on questionnaire responses. Second, it includes a broader cross-section of companies, including transnational and national companies domiciled in emerging markets and developing countries. Third, it provides information about the human rights standards of business entities other than firms. The two studies together comprise the most comprehensive analysis yet conducted on the subject of business and human rights.

Part I summarizes the publicly available information of more than 300 companies that have human rights policies and management practices in place – setting out how they address the broad spectrum of rights as evidenced in company reports, websites, codes of conduct, and general policies. Part II identifies the human rights standards included in selected collective initiatives, both industry-based and multi-stakeholder. And Part III examines the human rights criteria employed by SRI indices when selecting companies for investment.

For each of our three units of analysis – individual companies, collective initiatives, and SRI indices – we looked for indicators expressing or referencing rights included in the International Bill of Human Rights. 2 We also examined whether the prescribed policies and practices include accountability mechanisms for companies, such as reporting requirements; whether they hold the companies' suppliers to any human rights standards; the extent to which they stipulate corporate engagement with external stakeholders; and the human rights instruments to which companies, collective initiatives, and indices refer. Finally, we examined policies concerning bribery and corruption because they can and do impede the realization of rights.

Two caveats should be noted. First, it is possible that some companies do not make public all of their human rights-related policies and management practices, in which case they would have escaped our attention and the companies would not receive their due credit. This is unlikely to affect collective initiatives or the SRI indices, which tend to display their policies prominently in the public domain. Second, it is well beyond the scope of the present report to assess how effectively the stated policies and practices are actually implemented. Thus, by "business recognition" of human rights we mean the policies and management practices described in publicly available sources.