Need guidance to support human rights in your workplace? Check out the UN Guiding Principles Reporting Framework and implementation guide—a free downloadable resource, licensed through the Creative Commons.
The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights came into play in 2011, but the Reporting Framework hopes to steps things up.
According to John Ruggie: “This Reporting Framework puts the corporate responsibility to respect human rights into everyday language: a set of smart, straightforward questions to which any company needs to have answers – inside and outside its own walls. It offers companies a powerful tool to deepen internal conversations, identify gaps in performance and drive improvements in practice. It provides a basis to build constructive and meaningful conversations with their investors, civil society stakeholders and those groups directly affected by their operations.
“The Reporting Framework further empowers all these stakeholders to call for essential information about how companies are tackling the human rights challenges they face. Reporting that glosses over these realities with easy anecdotes no longer meets the grade. Governments, stock exchanges and rating systems the world over, with an interest in advancing non-financial reporting, can now turn to this Framework to set clear expectations for corporate disclosure and to drive improved accountability in relation to human rights. Companies that respond should be recognized and rewarded.” (UN Guiding Principles Reporting Framework, Forward)
Click here to download your copy of the framework and implementation pack, a collaboration by Shift and Mazars.
Mary has a PhD in Sociology from University of Edinburgh, researching responsible fashion and transnational labour rights activism in the wake of the Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh.
