The UN Guiding Principles Reporting Framework aims to catalyze meaningful corporate reporting on how companies understand and address human rights impacts associated with their business.

From a company’s perspective, pressure for increased transparency on human rights issues is only increasing, coming from regulators, investors, stock exchanges, civil society groups and consumers. Yet the current state of reporting is at best patchy. Much reporting is based around anecdotes and a changing array of projects and provides little clarity on how these connect to companies’ core business. Until recently there had been no clarity on what good human rights reporting looks like.

The UN Guiding Principles Reporting Framework provides that clarity and, for the first time, helps companies report in a meaningful way on their progress in implementing their responsibility to respect human rights. The Framework is designed to enable companies to begin reporting on their human rights performance, regardless of size or how far they have progressed in implementing their responsibility to respect human rights. Furthermore, the Framework is organized according to a phased approach that incentivizes companies to improve over time.