Authors: Shelley Marshall, Irene Pietropaoli, and Madeline Winterbottom (RMIT University of Melbourne)

As human rights due diligence laws are enacted around the world, it is vital that we compare their features and strengths and weaknesses. This database is a research project of Corporate Accountability Research (www.corporateaccountabilityresearch.net) based at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia with the aim of comparing legislation, regulation, soft law, and other initiatives globally that regulate work or promote human rights due diligence by business in their supply chains and corporate families. 33 initiatives have been coded. More will be added as initiatives are enacted.

For each initiative the database describes:

• A summary of purpose;
• A summary of pros and cons;
• The industry the regulation applies to, and the scope - the size of business covered;
• The jurisdiction, and the extent of extraterritorial powers;
• The type of workers protected, and the type of work arrangement covered;
• The definition of employer and of worker;
• Whether there is a requirement for the enterprise to register, to take steps to ensure compliance with the law from suppliers, to only contract with compliant suppliers, to keep all record of suppliers, to make suppliers transparent, and to keep record of work conducted;
• Whether there is an independent monitoring of suppliers, and involvement of trade unions in monitoring;
• Whether the initiative is linked to certification or ethical labelling;
• Compliance methods: criminal, monetary and other penalties for breach; and
• The type of enforcement or oversight mechanism.

This database and more reports and analyses are also available here: https://shelleymarshall.net/labour-regulation-of-global-supply-chains