"Holding business to account", May 2015

The promotion of responsible business conduct has taken an important step forward with the launch of a new reporting framework. Businesses now have no excuse for not explaining how they’re meeting their human rights obligations...[W]hat can we do to speed up the pace of change? Transparency is critical. It is an essential ingredient for gaining insight into the real challenges of implementation that companies face. It is also key for highlighting where governments need to up their game. It can enable constructive collaboration to address the systemic issues that no one actor can resolve alone. And it is essential to building markets for responsible business conduct that can reward the real leaders and shine a light on the laggards...The UN Guiding Principles Reporting Framework represents an indispensable contribution to the collective effort to embed both the UN Guiding Principles and the human rights components of the OECD MNE Guidelines into practice, and to scale up the pace of progress...