Increasingly, investors are becoming interested in understanding to what extent companies are respecting human rights, and whether their efforts are likely to improve the lives of affected people. A good place to start is by reading a company’s human rights disclosure. But company reports are often hard to analyze. On the surface, many companies will seem to be doing the right thing. But, how can investors tell whether what they are reading is meaningful and in line with what the UN Guiding Principles expect? This collection of resources was designed by Shift to help investors apply a people-centered approach to gain deeper insights from company disclosure.
In particular, this resource uses excerpts from companies’ reporting on systemic human rights challenges. It looks at:
- Whether the company positions itself solely as part of the solution to the human rights challenge concerned;
- Whether the company only reports its membership in groups or collective initiatives that tackle certain systemic human rights risks without describing its engagement with these initiatives and how this contributes to change;
- Whether the company reports on any actions it has taken unilaterally to address its own potential involvement with that issue.
