Consultation Opens on Human Rights Benchmarking

International consultation on the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark, which will rank the top 500 globally listed companies on their human rights policy, process and performance, has begun.

Established in December 2014 by the Business and Human Rights Centre, the organisation says there is already considerable evidence that public transparency combined with public rankings of companies’ performance can help to drive a race to the top.

The Benchmarking aims to

• Make corporate human rights performance easier to see and simpler to understand for a wide range of audiences – inside and outside companies.

• Commend and reward companies doing well while pointing the way forward to better performance.

• Introduce a positive competitive environment encouraging companies to race to the top of the annual ranking.

• Enable investors, civil society and regulators to challenge companies where performance is poor and improvements are necessary, using an evidence-based approach to improving corporate accountability.

“Investors will be better equipped with information to direct investments to companies actually performing against human rights standards and away from those who are not,” John Morrison, Executive Director of the Institute for Human Rights and Business said.

“We have now received generous support from the Dutch Government, the British Government, and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. While this provides a solid basis for the start up of the Benchmark, we are continuing to fundraise to consolidate the longevity of the Benchmark.

“We have been working on the first draft Methodology 1.0 of the Benchmark. We have developed our overarching framework including the design principles, scope, measurement themes and weightings.

“We established 5 measurement themes, 9 sub-topics and over 50 indicators. We also identified the initial companies that will be ranked in in the Benchmark’s first iteration: these will be the top 100 globally listed companies in the Extractive, Apparel and Food and Beverage sectors.

“Finally, we set out our roadmap to reach our ultimate aim of benchmarking the top 500 globally listed companies, with the first iteration of the Benchmark scheduled to be published in June 2016. We seek to hold a fully transparent multi-stakeholder consultation process in order to ensure a rigorous and credible methodology.”