While a growing number of tools related to human rights and business provide useful guidance for companies, most do not provide detailed information on human rights reporting. This guide aims to fill that gap and contribute to a clearer understanding of why human rights reporting matters, what stakeholders expect from a report, how to approach certain challenges in reporting and how to express various elements of human rights performance within sustainability reports. It draws upon lessons from current practices on human rights reporting and includes recommendations developed through a multi-stakeholder process.
This guide is intended to help companies begin a process of identifying human rights-relevant issues in their operations and to assist in translating these into meaningful and effective reporting. Though written primarily for companies that do not have extensive human rights reporting experience but are committed to improving their performance in this area, it contains information useful to NGOs and public agencies.
Recommendations:
- The two key factors that need to be considered in deciding on the scope of human rights reporting are the stakeholders who are affected by the company’s activities (and how), and the rights that might be affected by the organisation and its business sector.
- It’s best to take a broad approach in determining which stakeholders should be included as part of human rights reporting. A company’s activities can have significant effects well beyond its direct employees, those in the vicinity of its operations, or those (such as business partners) with a direct relationship to the company. Reporting should include disclosure on how human rights priorities were determined.
- Long before assessing potential human rights impacts of activities at site- or project-level, human rights due diligence calls for a broader assessment of a company’s potential impact on human rights, including evaluation of the potential human rights risks and opportunities linked to an industry, products and services and business model.
- Human rights reporting should describe how risks associated with human rights have been analysed and the extent to which any industry-level guidance on human rights risks has been consulted.. The next step is to report on any processes already in place, or actions taken, to prevent or mitigate human rights risks identified through the assessment process.
- Establishing a human rights policy is a necessary building block in committing to uphold human rights. As a statement that lays out the company’s actions, it is often the first thing that those evaluating a company’s human rights performance look for, so disclosure of the policy is a fundamental step in human rights reporting. But policies are only as good as the intention to implement, so report readers will want to see that there is enough organisational structure behind the policies to ensure comprehensive implementation.
- Integrating concern for human rights into every aspect of business is a crucial part of fulfilling the corporate responsibility to respect human rights. Integration means building these principles into all decisions and operating practices, and creating processes to implement human rights policies throughout the organization. The better the disclosure of these processes, the stronger the sense stakeholders will have of the company’s ability to manage human rights issues, including anticipating and preventing or mitigating negative impacts. This disclosure also provides an opportunity for the company to engage with stakeholders on specific processes that can strengthen respect for human rights.
- Report readers want to know whether the company has set up systems to track its human rights performance. These systems provide information on how well the organisation is implementing its policies and processes over time, where it needs to modify these processes and what its human rights impacts are on various stakeholders. For human rights reporting to be credible and complete, disclosure should include both positive and negative information about the company’s performance.
