Business and Human Rights Indi

HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY
Business and Human Rights Indicators

to Measure the Corporate
Responsibility to Respect:
Challenges and Opportunities
Damiano de Felice*
Abstract
Business and human rights indicators, ratings, and indices have proliferated
in the past few years. Yet, measuring respect for human rights by corporations
is not an easy task. This article offers an overview of the most prominent
business and human rights measurement initiatives and draws attention to
the normative, methodological, practical, and political challenges related
to the production of valid and emancipatory measures of corporate respect
for human rights. The objective is to move the debate forward, from the “if”
(whether to use indicators) to the “how” (how to create better initiatives).
* Damiano de Felice holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the London School of
Economics and Political Science. He is the Strategic Adviser to the CEO of the Access to
Medicine Foundation, the co-director of the Measuring Business and Human Rights project,
a Board Member of the European Society of International Law’s Interest Group in Business
and Human Rights, and a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on
Human Rights. His research interests include: aid, development, global governance, human
rights, and corporate social responsibility. Specifically with respect to business and human
rights issues, he concentrates on how to measure corporate respect for human rights and
how to integrate human rights considerations into the activities of pharmaceutical companies
and financial institutions. E-mail: [email protected].
This article would not have been possible without innumerable stimulating conversations
with the other co-directors of the Measuring Business and Human Rights Projects: Ann Sofie
Cloots, Charline Daelman, and Irene Pietropaoli.
Human Rights Quarterly 37 (2015) 511–555 © 2015 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
512 HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY Vol. 37
Twenty years ago, one of the recommendations of the World Conference on Human
Rights in Vienna was that we employ and analyze indicators to help measure our progress
in human rights. Only robust and accurate statistics can establish the vital benchmarks
and baselines that translate our human rights commitments into targeted policies, and
only they can measure how effective those policies truly are.
Navi Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 10 May 20131
I. Introduction
In 2008, the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council sanctioned the
existence of a corporate responsibility to respect human rights by unani-
mously welcoming the “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework for Busi-
ness and Human Rights, developed by Professor John Ruggie, then Special
Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) on the issue of human rights
and transnational corporations and other business enterprises.2 Three years
later, the Council offered the first authoritative guidance on how companies
should meet this responsibility by unanimously endorsing the Guiding Prin-
ciples on Business and Human Rights (GPs), the final document of Ruggie’s
mandate as SRSG.3 In short, business enterprises are expected to act with due
diligence to avoid infringing on the rights of others and to address adverse
impacts with which they are involved.4
Since 2011, key elements of the corporate responsibility to respect human
rights have been internalized by international organizations, standard-setting
bodies, governments, multi-stakeholder initiatives, civil society organizations,
and business enterprises themselves. To mention just one example for each
category, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
1. Navi Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Opening Statement to
the Launch of OHCHR Publication: Human Rights Indicators—A Guide to Measurement
and Implementation (10 May 2013), available at http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/
Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=13512&LangID=E.
2. Business and Human Rights: Towards Operationalizing the “Protect, Respect and Remedy”
Framework, Report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, John Rug-
gie, on the Issue of Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and Other Business
Enterprises, U.N. GAOR, Hum. Rts. Council, 11th Sess., ¶ 1, U.N. Doc. A/HRC/11/13
(2009). The governance framework proposed by Ruggie rests on three pillars: (1) the
state duty to protect against human rights abuses by third parties, including business; (2)
the corporate responsibility to respect human rights; and (3) greater access by victims
to effective remedy, both judicial and non-judicial. Id. ¶¶ 12–115.
3. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations
“Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework, Report of the Special Representative of the
Secretary-General on the Issue of Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and
Other Business Enterprises, John Ruggie, U.N. GAOR, Hum. Rts. Council, 17th Sess.,
U.N. Doc. A/HRC/17/31 (2011) [hereinafter Guiding Principles on Business and Human
Rights]. For a comprehensive account of Ruggie’s mandate as SRSG, see John G. Ruggie,
Just Business: Multinational Corporations and Human Rights (2013).
4. For a detailed guide on the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, see Office
of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, The Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human
Rights: An Interpretive Guide (2012).
2015 Measuring Respect for Human Rights by Corporations 513
(OECD) has updated its Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and added
a chapter on human rights that explicitly draws on the GPs;5 ISO26000, a
new social responsibility standard adopted by 93 percent of the member-
ship of the International Organization for Standardization, has a human
rights clause that is closely aligned with the UN Framework;6 the British
government published a National Action Plan to implement the GPs where
it set out clearly the expectation that “the UNGPs guide the approach UK
companies should take to respect human rights wherever they operate”;7
the Principles on Freedom of Expression and Privacy of the Global Net-
work Initiative explicitly recognize that “Information and Communications
Technology (ICT) companies have the responsibility to respect and protect
the freedom of expression and privacy rights of their users”;8 the Centre for
Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) published a guide for civil
society organizations on how to use the GPs to support local communities,
workers, and other rights holders;9 Nestlé has partnered with the Danish
Institute for Human Rights (DIHR) to conduct a human rights gap analysis
of its corporate policies and procedures.10
This unprecedented convergence around a common set of standards–to-
gether with the advent of technological innovations that permit one to easily
obtain information about the human rights footprint of brands and products
all around the world–has spurred widespread interest in how to measure
whether, and to what extent, corporations are meeting their responsibility to
respect human rights. It comes as no surprise, then, that indicators, ratings,
and indices have taken center stage as one of the most promising develop-
ments in the business and human rights field. Indicators derived from the
GPs are now included in management tools (for example, the GoodCor-
poration Framework on Human Rights), reporting standards (for example,
the Reporting and Assurance Framework Initiative led by the organizations
5. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD Guidelines for Multinational
Enterprises 31 (2011).
6. International Organization for Standardization, ISO 26000, at Sub-Clause 6.3 (2010).
7. HM Government of the United Kingdom, Good Business: Implementing the UN Guiding Principles
on Business and Human Rights 13 (2013), available at https://www.gov.uk/government/up-
loads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/236901/BHR_Action_Plan_-_final_online_ver-
sion_1_.pdf. With respect to National Action Plans on Business and Human Rights, see
Damiano de Felice & Andreas Graf, The Potential of National Action Plans to Implement
Human Rights Norms: An Early Assessment with Respect to the UN Guiding Principles
on Business and Human Rights, 7 J. Hum. Rts. Prac. 40 (2015).
8. Global Network Initiative, Principles on Freedom of Expression and Privacy 1 (2008).
9. Mariette van Huijstee, Victor Ricco & Laura Ceresna-Chaturvedi, How to Use the UN
Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in Company Research and Advocacy:
A Guide for Civil Society Organisations, SOMO (2012), available at http://somo.nl/
publications-en/Publication_3899.
10. Nestlé & Danish Inst. for Human Rights, Talking the Human Rights Walk: Nestlé’s Experience
Assessing Human Rights Impacts in its Business Activities (2013).
Shift and Mazars), sustainability indices (for example, FTSE4Good), working

methodologies used by providers of information on corporate performance
with respect to environmental, social, and governance issues (for example,
EIRIS), multi-stakeholder initiative certification schemes (for example, the
Responsible Jewellery Council Assessment Workbook), and ethical ratings
(for example, the Draft Business and Human Rights Index proposed by
RightsBusiness).
The Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational cor-
porations and other business enterprises—the UN body with the mandate to
promote the effective and comprehensive dissemination and implementation
of the GPs—confirmed the relevance of the topic on several occasions. In
2012, it suggested, “States and business enterprises should scale up and sus-
tain efforts to implement the Guiding Principles, including...by establishing
measurable and transparent indicators to assess their effective implementa-
tion.”11 In 2013, it specified, “[T]he development of performance indicators
that can be used by stakeholders to encourage proper functioning of grievance
mechanisms is important and can be used by stakeholders to understand
how grievance mechanisms at the operational level are working and to hold
business enterprises accountable.”12 Ruggie himself recently advocated for
additional efforts in measuring business and human rights results:
Human Rights Council endorsement of the Guiding Principles has generated
a wide array of implementation measures, national and international, public
and private. But no systematic assessment is available of overall results to date.
There are only anecdotal fragments, which may merely reflect observers’ prior
preferences. The Council’s considerations of where and how it can strengthen
its own 2011 implementation agenda should be informed by a more robust
evidentiary basis…Therefore, my first suggestion is that the Council arrange for
an assessment of major changes in policies and practices that have resulted from
the uptake of the GPs, and where such efforts are falling short.13
The benefits of indicators mainly derive from the potential for standard-
ization, aggregation, and ultimately, comparability of human rights informa-
tion over time and across companies. The production of valid business and
human rights indicators could be useful for:
11. Report of the United Nations Working Group on the issue of human rights and trans-
national corporations and other business enterprises to the General Assembly, U.N.
GAOR, 67th Sess., ¶ 79, U.N. Doc. A/67/285 (2012).
12. Report of the United Nations Working Group on the issue of human rights and trans-
national corporations and other business enterprises to the General Assembly, U.N.
GAOR, 68th Sess., ¶ 41 U.N. Doc. A/68/279 (2013).
13. John G. Ruggie, A UN Business and Human Rights Treaty? 2–3 (28 Jan. 2014) (Issues
Brief, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University).
• companies that want to manage their human rights risks and track their
progress in the implementation of the GPs;
• investors and consumers who wish to compare the human rights performance
of different corporations;
• auditors who are asked to verify the accuracy of human rights policies and
due-diligence processes;
• governments willing to adopt evidence-based protective measures;
• local communities that are concerned about the human rights footprint of
the companies operating in their environs;
• human rights advocates who monitor the human rights impacts of corporate
actors;
• researchers who are interested in exploring the drivers of responsible cor-

porate behavior.14
Notwithstanding these promises, measuring human rights is not an easy

task.15 In particular, business and human rights indicators risk producing (1)
invalid results and (2) non-emancipatory effects. First, by simplifying and
standardizing complex but partial data, indicators often depict misleading
pictures of corporate performance. Second, the way in which indicators are
currently produced disempowers human rights victims and legitimate centers
of power—such as the Human Rights Council and national parliaments—at
the expense of distant Economic, Social, and Governance (ESG) experts.
Quantifying specific aspects of the corporate responsibility to respect hu-
man rights might also end up condoning human rights abuses and giving
unwarranted prominence to easily measurable, though not necessarily more
important, issues.
Against this background, which includes a shortage of public discussion
on the topic,16 this article maps the business and human rights measurement
landscape and draws attention to its more problematic features. The article is
structured as follows. Section II clarifies the object of analysis by specifying
what business and human rights indicators are. Section III introduces the
14. See, e.g., Ariel Colonomos & Javier Santiso, Vive La France! French Multinationals and
Human Rights, 27 Hum. Rts. Q. 1307 (2005).
15. James R. Scarritt, Definitions, Dimensions, Data, and Designs, in Global Human Rights:
Public Policies, Comparative Measures, and NGO Strategies 115, 115 (Ved P. Nanda, James R.
Scarritt & George W. Shepherd, Jr. eds., 1981); Robert Archer, Introduction to the Special
Issue, 1 J. Hum. Rts. Prac. 333, 335 (2009); Todd Landman & Edzia Carvalho, Measuring
Human Rights 131 (2009).
16. The Institute for Human Rights and Business ranked “Improving non-financial risk
measurement in the Financial Sector” as one of the top ten business and human rights
issues for 2010. Top Ten Business and Human Rights Issues: 2010, Inst. for Human Rights
and Business (2009), available at http://www.ihrb.org/top10/business_human_rights_is-
sues/2010.html#. Yet, the topic has not featured any more in the lists from 2011 to 2014.
reader to a representative sample of measurement initiatives in the business

and human rights field. Section IV explains how to align indicators with the
GPs, but also highlights the problems deriving from the fact that the GPs
have left many normative questions unanswered. Section V displays the most
daunting methodological and practical challenges to produce valid business
and human rights indicators. Section VI emphasizes that indicators are not
simple technical tools, but in fact, their production poses important political
questions. The conclusion suggests the use of judgment-based measures,
like standard-based ratings and surveys, and calls for additional research on
specific initiatives. The ultimate objective is to move the discussion forward,
from the “if” (whether respect for human rights by corporations can be mea-
sured) to the “how” (how to produce valid and emancipatory indicators).
While this article represents, to the knowledge of the author, the first
academic reflection on the challenges and opportunities offered by busi-
ness and human rights indicators, it builds on a substantial base of re-
search regarding state-focused human rights measures.17 Indeed, Raworth
acknowledged, “Although the framework of international law is only one
particular conception of human rights, and its focus on state conduct alone
is considered by many to be problematic, the issues that arise in the attempt
to develop indicators under this framework are also relevant to alternative
conceptions of rights.”18 Still, the results from this literature cannot simply be
copied and pasted to the new field. First of all, the evolution of business and
human rights norms is still in its infancy in comparison with state-focused
human rights law. Second, state obligations and corporate responsibilities
are fundamentally different: While states are generally responsible for all
human rights violations committed under their jurisdiction, the problem of
attribution is much more complex for corporate abuses.19 Third, while states
17. The Human Rights Quarterly has dedicated particular attention to the topic of measuring
human rights. In addition to the articles cited throughout the text, see Rhoda Howard,
Evaluating Human Rights in Africa: Some Problems of Implicit Comparisons, 6 Hum.
Rts. Q. 160 (1984); Michael Stohl et al., State Violation of Human Rights: Issues and
Problems of Measurement, 8 Hum. Rts. Q. 592 (1986); Jack Donnelly & Rhoda Howard,
Assessing National Human Rights Performance: A Theoretical Framework, 10 Hum. Rts.
Q. 214 (1988); Robert E. Robertson, Measuring State Compliance with the Obligation
to Devote the “Maximum Available Resources” to Realizing Economic, Social, and Cul-
tural Rights, 16 Hum. Rts. Q. 693 (1994); Clair Apodaca, Measuring Women’s Economic
and Social Rights Achievement, 20 Hum. Rts. Q. 139 (1998); Deborah Maine & Alicia
Ely Yamin, Maternal Mortality as a Human Rights Issue: Measuring Compliance with
International Treaty Obligations, 21 Hum. Rts. Q. 563 (1999); Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Mil-
lennium Development Goal 8: Indicators for International Human Rights Obligations?,
28 Hum. Rts. Q. 966 (2006); Judith V. Welling, International Indicators and Economic,
Social, and Cultural Rights, 30 Hum. Rts. Q. 933 (2008).
18. Kate Raworth, Measuring Human Rights, 15 Ethics & Int’l Aff. 111, 117 (2001).
19. The problem of attribution affects all types of human rights impact assessment. See Erik
André Andersen & Hans-Otto Sano, Human Rights Indicators at Programme and Project
Level: Guidelines for Defining Indicators Monitoring and Evaluation, Danish Inst. for
amount to less than 200 in number, it is estimated today that there are more
than 100,000 multinational corporations and 900,000 foreign affiliates.20
These differences justify the decision to also draw some insights from the
academic literature on measuring corporate social responsibility issues.21
II. Business and Human Rights Indicators
The traditional way to assess the human rights performance of a company

is to look at the individual level, take context into account, and offer infor-
mation in narrative form: A judge, a treaty body, and a human rights NGO
retrace the events leading to an alleged human rights abuse suffered by an
individual, or a group of individuals, and ascertain whether the corpora-
tion met its responsibility to respect human rights and/or complied with
relevant obligations under national and international law. For instance: In
2010, activists filed a lawsuit before a Canadian Court against a Canadian
mining company—Hudbay Minerals—over the alleged murder of Adolfo Ich
Chamán, a respected Mayan Q’eqchi’ community leader and an outspoken
critic of the harms caused by mining activities in Guatemala. The claim cen-
tered on an allegation of human rights abuse against an individual, took the
context of potential complicity with other private actors into account, and
described the event in narrative form: The judge was called on to decide
Human Rights 22–23 (2006); Fernande Raine, The Measurement Challenge in Human
Rights, 4 Sur: Int’l J. Hum. Rts. 7, 14, 24 (2006); Ian Gorvin, Producing the Evidence
that Human Rights Advocacy Works: First Steps towards Systematized Evaluation at
Human Rights Watch, 1 J. Hum. Rts. Prac. 477, 481 (2009); Claire Thomas, Evaluation
at Minority Rights Group, 1 J. Hum. Rts. Prac. 488, 492 (2009).
20. Robert D. Hormats, Under Secretary, The Continuing Importance of Investment in the
Global Economy, Address Before the World Investment Forum in Doha, Qatar (20–23
Apr. 2012).
21. For comprehensive reviews of this literature, see Sarah Elena Windolph, Assessing Cor-
porate Sustainability Through Ratings: Challenges and Their Causes, 1 J. Envtl. Sustain.
61 (2011); Cory Searcy, Corporate Sustainability Performance Measurement Systems:
A Review and Research Agenda, 107 J. Bus. Ethics 239 (2012). In addition to the refer-
ences throughout the text, these reports and articles are particularly relevant for the
discussion that follows: Seb Beloe et al., Values for Money: Reviewing the Quality of
SRI Research, SustainAbility / MISTRA (2004); Johan J. Graafland, S.C.W. Eijffinger &
H. Smid, Benchmarking of Corporate Social Responsibility: Methodological Problems
and Robustness, 53 J. Bus. Ethics 137 (2004); Aaron Chatterji & David Levine, Breaking
Down The Wall Of Codes: Evaluating Non-Financial Performance Measurement, 48 Cal.
Mgmt. Rev. 29 (2006); Marc J. Epstein, Making Sustainability Work: Best Practices in Managing
and Measuring Corporate Social, Environmental, and Economic Impacts (2008); Thomas O.
Wiedmann, Manfred Lenzen & John R. Barrett, Companies on the Scale: Comparing
and Benchmarking the Sustainability Performance of Businesses, 13 J. Indus. Ecol’y 361
(2009); Magali Delmas & Vered Doctori Blass, Measuring Corporate Environmental Per-
formance: the Trade-Offs of Sustainability Ratings, 19 Bus. Strategy & Env’t 245 (2010);
Projects: Rate the Raters, SustainAbility (2012), available at http://www.sustainability.com/
projects/rate-the-raters.
whether—on 27 September 2009—Hudbay Minerals “negligently authorized

the excessive use of force by its security personnel in response to Mayan
Q’eqchi’ communities that were peacefully opposing the illegal occupation
of historic Mayan land.”22
While the individual-contextual-narrative approach is appropriate to
determine whether a company abused the human rights of a specific in-
dividual or group of individuals, it suffers from important limitations if the
objective is to measure the human rights performance of a company in
general terms. How is one to know whether abusive behavior in a specific
case is the rule or just an exception? How is one to compare and aggregate
information from different projects, factories, countries of operation, and so
on? The move from the specific to the general is where business and human
rights indicators step in.
In an imaginary continuum of human rights measures, indicators–the
building blocks of ratings and indices–sit on the opposite end of the indi-
vidual-contextual-narrative approach.23 Indicators simplify and standardize
human rights data, often taking context out of the equation, in order to
aggregate different pieces of information and permit their comparison.24
In addition, they take no narrative form.25 A business and human rights
indicator can be defined as a “named collection of rank-ordered data that
purports to represent the past or projected [human rights] performance” of a
corporation and whose results are conveyed through a self-contained verbal
or numerical expression, such as a count (257), a percentage (15 percent),
or a verb (agree/not agree).26 The table below offers a number of examples.
22. Choc v. HudBay Minerals Inc. (2010), CV-10-411159, Claim ¶ 2 (Can. Ont. Sup. Ct.
J.).
23. For a similar distinction between “qualitative” and “quantitative” approaches to human
rights (even though the terminology is misleading, as indicators can be both quantitative
and qualitative), see Filip Spagnoli, Human Rights, the Quantitative Approach (Social
Science Research Network, 16 Mar. 2009).
24. Confirming the importance of the simplifying power of indicators, see Andersen & Sano,
supra note 19, at 10; Sally Engle Merry, Human Rights Monitoring and the Question of
Indicators, in Human Rights at the Crossroads 140, 141 (Mark Goodale ed., 2013). For a
skeptical view on aggregating human rights information (because of its inherent focus
on the individual), see John F. McCamant, A Critique of Present Measures of “Human
Rights Development” and an Alternative, in Global Human Rights, supra note 15, at 123.
25. Human rights advocates and trade unions have a strong preference for human rights
information to be reported in narrative form. See Statement on the Shift-Mazars Discussion
Paper on “Developing Global Standards for the Reporting and Assurance of Company
Alignment with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights”, ITUC, CSE
& IGB 4–5 (2013), available at http://business-humanrights.org/sites/default/files/media/
documents/ituc-re-shift-mazars.pdf.
26. This definition is adapted from Kevin E. Davis, Benedict Kingsbury & Sally Engle Merry,
Indicators as a Technology of Global Governance, 46 Law & Soc’y Rev. 71, 73–74 (2012).
For similar definitions of human rights indicators, see Maria Green, What We Talk About
When We Talk About Indicators: Current Approaches to Human Rights Measurement,
23 Hum. Rts. Q. 1062, 1065, 1076–80 (2001); Office of the High Commissioner for Human
Rights (OHCHR), Human Rights Indicators: A Guide to Measurement and Implementation 16
(2012), available at http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Indicators/Pages/documents.aspx.
Table 1. Examples of business and human rights indicators
Indicator Potential results

The company has adopted a policy Yes/No
statement that includes a commitment to
respect the International Bill of Human Rights
Percentage of suppliers screened on the From 0% to 100%
basis of human rights performance
The importance of human rights Very important/important/not important
for the company, according to its (percentage of responses from a survey of
employees employees)
Number of human rights From 0 upward
lawsuits against the company
General respect for human rights From 1 to 5 (average result of a survey of
by the corporation, according to business and human rights experts)
human rights experts
III. Business and Human Rights Measurement Initiatives
According to AnnJanette Rosga and Margaret Satterthwaie, “[I]t is fair to say

that there is an emerging market in human rights indicators.”27 This is par-
ticularly true with respect to business and human rights. While the synopsis
below briefly portrays a representative sample of initiatives that measure
the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, Table 2 offers a more
comprehensive overview of the business and human rights measurement
landscape. The objective is to demonstrate that all corporate stakeholders
have showed lively interest in measuring respect for human rights by corpo-
rations and that the production of indicators has already become a standard
practice within the business and human rights community.
A. Management Tools
According to the GPs, “In order to verify whether adverse human rights
impacts are being addressed, business enterprises should track the effective-
ness of their response”. In addition, “[t]racking should…[b]e based on ap-
propriate qualitative and quantitative indicators.”28 Susan Aaronson and Ian
Higham confirm that, “[l]ike other organizations, private business will need
to rely on metrics (means or indicators to understand social phenomena) so
they can monitor their performance over time. Such metrics can help firms
27. AnnJanette Rosga & Margaret L. Satterthwaie, The Trust in Indicators: Measuring Human
Rights, 27 Berkeley J. Int’l L. 253, 255 (2009).
28. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, supra note 3, GP 20.
link the conceptual discussion about human rights to actual implementa-

tion.”29 The DIHR has produced a Human Rights Compliance Assessment
tool that enables companies to identify the degree of due diligence in place
to ensure respect for human rights.30 “The tool incorporates a database of
195 questions and 947 indicators, each measuring the implementation of
human rights in corporate policies and procedures…Companies answer the
relevant questions and receive a final report identifying areas of compliance
and non-compliance in their operations. Numeric scores allow companies
to track their performance year to year.”31
B. Reporting Frameworks
The GPs require that, in order to account for how they address their human
rights impacts, “business enterprises should be prepared to communicate
this externally.” External reporting “should cover…indicators concerning how
enterprises identify and address adverse impacts on human rights.”32 The
Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI) G4 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines,
which are widely recognized as one of the most authoritative sustainability
reporting standards in the market, now include a specific section on human
rights.33 The Human Rights sub-Category consists of twelve indicators and
“covers the extent to which [due diligence] processes have been imple-
mented, incidents of human rights violations, and changes in stakeholders’
ability to enjoy and exercise their human rights. Among the human rights
issues included are non-discrimination, gender equality, freedom of asso-
ciation, collective bargaining, child labor, forced or compulsory labor, and
indigenous rights.”34
29. Susan Ariel Aaronson & Ian Higham, “Re-Righting Business”: John Ruggie and the
Struggle to Develop International Human Rights Standards for Transnational Firms, 35
Hum. Rts. Q. 333, 359 (2013).
30. Danish Inst. for Human Rights, Human Rights Compliance Assessment 2.0 (2010), available at
https://hrca2.humanrightsbusiness.org/.
31. Id.
32. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, supra note 3, GP 21 and Commentary.
33. Global Reporting Initiative, G4 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines: Reporting Principles and
Standard Disclosures 70–75 (2013), available at https://www.globalreporting.org/resour-
celibrary/GRIG4-Part1-Reporting-Principles-and-Standard-Disclosures.pdf [hereinafter
G4 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines].
34. Global Reporting Initiative, G4 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines: Implementation Manual
173–97 (2013), available at https://www.globalreporting.org/resourcelibrary/GRIG4-Part2-
Implementation-Manual.pdf. See also UN Global Compact et al., A Resource Guide to
Corporate Human Rights Reporting (United Nations 2009).
Table 2. Illustrative list of measurement initiatives using business and human rights indicators
2015
Name Producer Time Focus Brief description

1. Management tools
GoodCorporation
Framework on Human
Rights GoodCorporation 2012 Human rights A set of responsible
management practices that
organizations can use to
measure and improve the
robustness of their policies
and systems
Indicadores Ethos para Ethos Institute of Business First version: 2000. Corporate sustainability A voluntary tool designed for
Negócios Sustentáveis and Social Responsibility Latest version: 2013. (including specific companies to support the
e Responsáveis indicators on human process of incorporation of
rights, labor rights, and sustainability in their
stakeholder engagement) management
Human Rights Danish Institute for First version: 2005. Human rights A self-assessment tool to be
Compliance Human Rights (DIHR) Second and latest version: used by company staff to
Assessment Tool 2011. Yearly update since evaluate human rights-related
then. policies, procedures, and
performance
Human Rights Matrix
The Business Leaders First version: 2003. Human rights A self-assessment tool
Initiative on Human Rights Latest version: 2009. designed to support a
company in understanding
human rights in relation to its
Measuring Respect for Human Rights by Corporations
policies, procedures, and

initiatives
UN Global Compact DIHR, the Confederation 2010 Corporate sustainability A self-assessment tool to test
Self Assessment Tool of Danish Industries, the (including specific the company’s performance on
Ministry of Economic indicators on human all ten UN Global Compact
and Business Affairs, and rights and labor rights) principles
521
the Danish Investment

Fund for Developing Countries
Table 2. Continued. 522

2. Reporting frameworks
Children’s rights in UNICEF 2013 Children’s rights A practical tool to help
sustainability reporting: companies with reporting and
A guide for integrating communicating on how they
children’s rights into the are respecting and supporting
GRI reporting framework children’s rights through their
policies, processes, and
operations in the workplace,
marketplace, and community
G4 Sustainability Global Reporting Initiative First version: 2000; Corporate sustainability Guidelines to enable all
Reporting Guidelines latest version: 2013 (including specific organizations to report the
indicators on human sustainability information that
rights, labor rights, matters
product responsibility, and
relationship with society)
Key Performance
DVFA Society of 2010 Sustainability (including A reporting framework for
Indicators for ESG 3.0
Investment Professionals, in specific indicators on ecological, social, and
Germany in conjunction health & safety and supply corporate governance aspects
with EFFAS European chain management) built on requirements of
Federation of Financial investment professionals
Analysts Societies

Oil and gas industry IPIECA, API, and OGP First edition: 2005; Sustainability (including Aims to assist oil and gas
guidance on voluntary second and latest specific indicators on companies in developing and
sustainability reporting edition: 2010 human rights, labor enhancing the quality and
practices, and community consistency of their
and society) sustainability reports
Reporting and Assurance Mazars and Shift Started in 2013, expected Human rights A project to develop public
Framework Initiative launch in February 2015 reporting and assurance
frameworks based on the UN
Vol. 37
Guiding Principles on Business

and Human Rights
3. Sustainability indices
Dow Jones S&P Dow Jones Indices Launched in 1999 and Sustainability (including A family of indices tracking
2015
Sustainability Indices (data provided by regularly updated since specific indicators on the financial performance of
RobecoSAM) then labor practices and human the largest companies that
rights) lead their industries in terms
of corporate sustainability
Euronext Vigeo Indices
NYSE Euronext Launched in 2013 and Sustainability (including A family of indices composed
(data provided by Vigeo) regularly updated since specific indicators on of the highest-ranking listed
then human rights and companies as evaluated in
community involvement) terms of their performance in
corporate responsibility
FTSE4Good Index Series
FTSE (data provided Launched in 2001 and Sustainability (including A family of benchmarks and
by the Experts in regularly updated since specific indicators on tradable indices, which
Responsible Investment then human & labor rights, include only those companies
Solutions, EIRIS) and supply chain labor that meet certain sustainability
standards) criteria
Global Compact 100
Global Compact Launched in 2013 with Sustainability (including A stock index composed
(data provided by planned regular updates specific indicators on of a representative group
Sustainalytics) human rights and labor of Global Compact companies
standards) selected based on their
adherence to the Global
Compact’s ten principles,
evidence of executive
leadership commitment, and
consistent base-line
profitability
STOXX ESG Leaders
STOXX Limited Launched in 2011 and Sustainability A rule-based and fully
Indices
(data provided by regularly updated since transparent series of
Sustainalytics) then environmental, social, and
governance indices
523

4. Sustainability standards
Audit Protocol to Assess A group of corporate 2013 Human rights A methodology for the
Compliance with Key participants in the determination of the
Performance Indicators Voluntary Principles on level of implementation of,
Security and Human and compliance with, the
Rights initiative tenets of the Voluntary
Principles
EO100™ Standard Equitable Origin 2012 Sustainability (including The first stakeholder-based,
specific indicators on comprehensive social and
human rights, social environmental certification,
impact, community certificate trading, and eco-
development, fair labor label system for oil and gas
and working conditions, exploration and production
and indigenous peoples’
rights)
ETI Management Ethical Trading Initiative 2010 Labor rights and working The benchmarks are the
Benchmarks conditions means by which ETI sets out
its expectations of members
and measures members’
progress in applying the ETI
Base Code and Principles of

Implementation.
RJC Assessment Responsible Jewellery 2013 Sustainability (including A document containing
Workbook Council specific indicators on instructions for members and
responsible supply chain auditors on how to complete
and human rights, and self-assessments and
labor rights and working certification
conditions)
Social Fingerprint®
Social Accountability 2010 Decent work and supply A program of ratings, training,
International chain management and toolkits designed to help
Vol. 37
companies understand and

measure their social impact
now, and then learn how to
2015
improve it
5. Human Rights Impact Assessment tools

Business Guide for UN Global Compact 2002 Conflict and human rights A guide for companies to
Conflict Impact develop strategies that
Assessment and Risk minimize the negative effects
Management and maximize the positive
effects of investing in areas of
conflict or potential conflict
Children’s Rights in UNICEF and Danish 2013 Children’s rights A guide for companies to
Impact Assessments: Institute for Human assess their policies and
A guide for integrating Rights processes as they relate to
children’s rights into their responsibility to respect
impact assessments children’s rights and their
and taking action for commitment to support
children children’s rights
Getting it Right: Rights & Democracy 2008 Human rights A step-by-step process for
A step by step guide those wishing to take stock of
to assess the impact the positive and negative
of foreign investments human rights impacts of an
on human rights investment project in their
community, including a 75
page compilation of questions
derived from international
human rights law
Human Rights Impact NomoGaia 2012 Human rights A four-phase process of

Assessment Toolkit human rights impact
assessment, starting with data
gathering and scoping and
culminating with a set of rights
scores contrasting baseline
525
human rights conditions and

impacts

Human Rights On Common Ground 2010 Sustainability (including An assessment of the human
Assessment of specific indicators on rights situation around, and
Goldcorp’s Marlin human rights, labor rights, related to, the presence and
Mine in Honduras and access to remedy) operations of the Marlin Mine
in San Miguel Ixtahuacán and
Sipacapa Municipalities,
Guatemala
6. Ethical ratings
100 Best Corporate Corporate Responsibility Every year since 2000 Corporate responsibility One of the most influential
Citizens List Magazine (data provided (including specific corporate responsibility
by IW Financial) indicators on human rankings entirely based on
rights) publicly-available information
Access to Medicine
Access to Medicine Published every two Access to medicine An independent initiative
Index
Foundation (data provided years since 2008 that ranks the world’s twenty
by MSCI; since 2013, largest pharmaceutical
by Sustainalytics) companies according to their
efforts to make their products
more affordable and
accessible in developing
countries
Behind the Brands Oxfam Launched in 2013 with Agricultural sourcing A scorecard that assesses the
planned regular updates policies (including specific agricultural sourcing policies
indicators on workers’ of the world’s ten largest food
rights, women’s rights, and beverage companies
land rights, and right to
water)
GoodGuide Dara O’Rourke, Founded in 2007. Version Sustainability (including A website and smartphone
Professor of environmental 2.0 released in 2011. specific indicators on app to search or browse over
Vol. 37
and labor policy at the Regularly updated since human rights, workers’ 145,000 food items, toys, and
University of California then rights, and community personal care and household
at Berkeley relations) products, and to learn about
2015
the best and worst products in

a category
Responsible Supply VBDO Launched in 2006 Sustainability in
Chain Benchmark supply chains A benchmark that assesses the
way in which Dutch publicly
listed companies involve
suppliers in their sustainability
policies
Note: The table is an illustrative, not comprehensive, list of existing initiatives using business and human rights indicators. The purpose is not to offer
a complete overview of the business and human rights measurement landscape, but to show that using indicators has become a standard practice for
all stakeholders in the business and human rights field.
527
C. ESG Data Providers and Sustainability Indices
Financial institutions and investors are expected to meet their responsibil-

ity to respect human rights by using their shareholders’ rights to engage
with the managers of controversial companies in which they invest, or by
screening abusive corporations out of their portfolio.35 Both strategies require
the ability to measure and compare corporate performance over time and
across companies.36 To meet this expectation, responsible investors usually
purchase human rights ratings from specialized providers of information on
ESG corporate performance.37 For instance, Sustainalytics instructs its eighty
analysts to use specific human rights indicators in order to track companies’
preparedness in managing their exposure to human rights risks and their
performance in respecting human rights.38 In addition to providing specific
information to certain financial clients, ESG data providers supply raw data
for the creation of sustainability stock indexes.39 The Dow Jones Sustain-
ability Indexes (DJSI), for instance, use RobecoSAM’s annual Corporate
Sustainability Assessments (CSA) to assign companies a Total Sustainability
Score between 0 and 100 and detect sustainability leaders: Only the top 10
percent of companies from each industry are included in the indexes.40 The
35. Damiano de Felice, Banks and Human Rights Due Diligence: A Critical Analysis of the
Thun Group’s Discussion Paper on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human
Rights, Int’l J. Hum. Rts. (forthcoming 2015); Inst. for Human Rights and Business, Investing
the Rights Way: A Guide for Investors on Business and Human Rights (2013).
36. See Aaron Bernstein, Incorporating Labor and Human Rights Risk Into Investment Deci-
sions, 2 Occasional Paper Ser. (Capital Matters, Pensions and Capital Stewardship Project
Labor and Worklife Program Harvard Law School) (2008); Aaron Bernstein, Quantifying
Labor and Human Rights Portfolio Risk, 4 Occasional Paper Ser. (Capital Matters, Pensions
and Capital Stewardship Project Labor and Worklife Program, Harvard Law School)
(2009).
37. Antonio Márquez & Charles J. Fombrun, Measuring Corporate Social Responsibility, 7
Corp. Reputation Rev. 304 (2005); Steven Scalet & Thomas F. Kelly, CSR Rating Agencies:
What is Their Global Impact?, 94 J. Bus. Ethics 69 (2010). For critical reviews, see GlobeScan
& SustainAbility, Experts Trust Ratings Organizations Less Than NGOs and Employees as
Judges of Sustainability Performance (4 Oct. 2010), available at http://www.globescan.
com/news_archives/tss2010_ratings_orgs/; econsense, More Transparency, More Efficiency,
More Impact: The Opportunities and Challenges of Sustainability Ratings and Rankings
(2012).
38. Ilse Griek, UN Forum on Human Rights: Assessing the Ruggie Framework, Systainalytics
(2013), available at http://www.sustainalytics.com/assessing-ruggie-framework; Farnam
Bidgoli, Benchmarking the Responsibilty to Respect, presented at Meeting on a Human
Rights Performance Benchmark (Aviva Investors, London 2013) (on file with author).
39. For a critical view, see Stephen Fowler & Chris Hope, A Critical Review of Sustainable
Business Indices and Their Impact, 76 J. Bus. Ethics 243 (2007). For more information on
the relationship between sustainability and stock exchanges, see the research documents
produced by the Sustainable Stock Exchanges Initiative, such as Jaideep Singh Panwar &
Jenny Blinch, Sustainable Stock Exchanges: A Report on Progress (2012), available at https://
www.unglobalcompact.org/docs/issues_doc/Financial_markets/Sustainable_Stock_Ex-
changes.pdf.
40. S&P Dow Jones Indices, Dow Jones Sustainability World Index (2013). As a general introduc-
tion to the Index, see also Ivo Knoepfel, Dow Jones Sustainability Group Index: A Global
Benchmark for Corporate Sustainability, 8 Corp. Envtl. Strategy 6, 9, 12 (2001).
questionnaire used for the CSA is industry-specific and contains approxi-

mately 80–120 pre-weighted indicators on financially relevant economic,
environmental, and social factors.41 In the questionnaire for the Metals and
Mining Industry, the Labor Practice and Human Rights Indicators weigh 4
percent of the total score.42
D. Sustainability Standards
The development of business and human rights standards for specific indus-
tries, regions, or vulnerable groups often takes place through multi-stakeholder
initiatives—that is, formal platforms that bring together the expertise of
representatives of government, business, and civil society.43 Many of these
initiatives have produced indicators to assess the performance of participating
companies and, in specific cases, certify their meaningful participation. For
instance, the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights (VPs) is a
multi-stakeholder initiative that promotes implementation of a set of principles
that guide oil, gas, and mining companies in their engagement with public
and private security providers to ensure that human rights are respected in
the protection of corporate facilities.44 In 2013, fourteen VP corporate par-
ticipants created the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) Volunteer Group and
developed assurance mechanisms to validate implementation of the VPs.45
Explicitly drawing on the GPs, KPI No. 6 asks whether “the company has a
procedure or mechanism to address human rights incidents by public/private
security forces relating to the company’s activities.”46
41. RobecoSAM, Measuring Intangibles: RobecoSAM’s Corporate Sustainability Assessment Meth-

odology 2–3 (2013), available at http://www.robecosam.com/images/CSA_methodol-
ogy_us.pdf.
42. RobecoSAM, Corporate Sustainability Assessment 2013: Criteria Weightings Per RobecoSAM
GICS Industry (2013).
43. Multi-stakeholder engagement is one of the requirements included in the Standard-Setting
Code of ISEAL, a nongovernmental organization (NGO) whose mission is to strengthen
sustainability standards systems. ISEAL Alliance, Setting Social and Environmental Standards
v5.0: ISEAL Code of Good Practice 16 (2010). For an overview of multi-stakeholder
initiatives, visit the website of the Institute for Multi-Stakeholder Initiative Integrity (a
project that examines the impact and value of voluntary business-related human rights
initiatives). MSI Integrity, What are MSIs? (2013), available at http://www.msi-integrity.
org/about/what-are-msis/.
44. What Are The Voluntary Principles?, Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights,
available at http://www.voluntaryprinciples.org/what-are-the-voluntary-principles/.
45. Summary of Voluntary Principles Implementation Efforts During 2012, Voluntary Principles
on Security and Human Rights at 3 (2013).
46. The Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, Audit Protocol to Assess Compliance
with Key Performance Indicators 5 (2013), available at http://business-humanrights.org/sites/
default/files/media/documents/voluntary-principles-audit-protocol-jun-2013.pdf.
E. Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) Tools
According to the Guiding Principles: “In order to gauge human rights risks,
business enterprises should identify and assess any actual or potential adverse
human rights impacts with which they may be involved either through their
own activities or as a result of their business relationships.”47 Companies
operating in difficult environments increasingly respond to this requirement
by conducting project-level HRIAs, whose fundamental purpose is to provide
a reasoned, supported, and comprehensive answer to the question: How does
the project affect human rights?48 In 2012, NomoGaia produced a “Human
Rights Impact Assessment Toolkit,” which recommends a four-phase process
for HRIAs.49 Phase II, entitled “Human Rights Topics Catalogs,” is dedicated
to identifying baseline human rights conditions in the project area, against
which project impacts can be compared. Human rights issues are divided
into more than 300 topics and subtopics, or indicators. Each subtopic is as-
sociated with an impact score for the intensity and extent of impact likely
to result from project activities.50
F. Ethical Ratings
As responsible citizens can influence corporate behavior through their con-

sumption practices, such as ethical shopping and boycotts,51 it comes as no
47. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, supra note 3, GP 18. During the first
two years of his mandate as SRSG, Ruggie monitored ongoing HRIA initiatives. Its findings
are presented in Report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the
Issue of Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises,
John G. Ruggie, Human Rights Impact Assessments: Resolving Key Methodological
Questions, U.N. GAOR, Hum. Rts. Council, 4th Sess., U.N. Doc. A/HRC/4/74 (2007).
48. Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal dedicated a Special Issue to “Human Rights
and Impact Assessment.” See Deanna Kemp & Frank Vanclay, Human Rights and Impact
Assessment: Clarifying the Connections in Practice, 31 Impact Assessment & Project Appraisal
86 (2013); Geordan Graetz & Daniel M. Franks, Incorporating Human Rights into the
Corporate Domain: Due Diligence, Impact Assessment and Integrated Risk Manage-
ment, 31 Impact Assessment & Project Appraisal 97 (2013); James Harrison, Establishing
a Meaningful Human Rights Due Diligence Process for Corporations: Learning From
Experience of Human Rights Impact Assessment, 31 Impact Assessment & Project Appraisal
107 (2013); Richard Boele & Christine Crispin, What Direction for Human Rights Impact
Assessments?, 31 Impact Assessment & Project Appraisal 128 (2013).
49. NomoGaia, Human Rights Impact Assessment: A Toolkit for Practitioners Conducting Corporate
HRIAs 7 (2012), available at http://nomogaia.org/tools/#item1.
50. NomoGaia, Corporate Human Rights Impact Assessment: Guided Template for Practitioners 11
(2012).
51. See Lois A. Mohr, Deborah J. Webb & Katherine E. Harris, Do Consumers Expect
Companies to Be Socially Responsible? The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility
on Buying Behavior, 35 J. Consumer Aff. 45 (2001); Deirdre Shaw, Terry Newholm &
Roger Dickinson, Consumption as Voting: An Exploration of Consumer Empowerment,
40 Eur. J. Marketing 1049, 1050 (2006); Behrang Rezabakhsh et al., Consumer Power:
A Comparison of the Old Economy and the Internet Economy, 29 J. Consumer Pol’y 3,
10 (2006).
surprise that consumers have been targeted with simplified and comparative
information about corporate performance on sustainability issues, including
human rights. As part of its GROW campaign, Oxfam produces a Behind the
Brands Scorecard that rates the agricultural sourcing policies of the world’s
ten largest food and beverage companies.52 Based on publicly available
information, the Scorecard looks at seven themes, including transparency
at the corporate level, women, farmworkers, land, and water issues. The
indicators for each theme are grouped into four categories (each worth one
quarter of the score available for that theme): (1) awareness, (2) knowledge,
(3) commitments, and (4) supply chain management.53
IV. The Normative Framework: The United Nations Guiding

Principles on Business and Human Rights
In a recently published guide on how to produce state-focused human rights

indicators, the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR)
convincingly argues that a “conceptually coherent” normative framework is
necessary to avoid the creation of subjective and random lists of indicators.54
While the OHCHR focuses on state obligations, and therefore locates this
framework in international human rights covenants and their interpretation
by relevant treaty bodies, the obvious normative framework for the business
and human rights community is formed by the GPs.
A. Three Lessons from the GPs
The GPs offer three implicit but unambiguous requirements on the produc-
tion of indicators to measure corporate respect for human rights. First of
all, indicators should not limit their focus on those human rights issues that
have significant financial consequences for the company: “Human rights
due diligence can be included within broader enterprise risk-management
systems, provided that it goes beyond simply identifying and managing mate-
rial risks to the company itself, to include risks to rights-holders.”55 UNICEF
and DIHR have suggested a list of indicators in order to integrate children’s
52. Behind the Brands: Food Companies Scorecard, Oxfam (2014), available at http://www.
behindthebrands.org/en-gb/company-scorecard.
53. The Behind the Brands Scorecard Methodology, Oxfam 5-6 (2014), available at http://
www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/btb_methodology_docu-
ment_final_sept_2014.pdf.
54. Human Rights Indicators, supra note 26, at 29. For a quick overview of the UN engage-
ment with the topic of human rights indicators (which started in 1990 with a report by
Danilo Turk, then UN Special Rapporteur on the Realization of Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights), see Rosga & Satterthwaie, supra note 27, at 273.
55. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, supra note 3, Commentary to GP
17.
rights into HRIAs. Following the GPs, the two organizations specified that
material issues in a children’s rights context should “reflect the perspective
of children as key stakeholders; they are considered in terms of the impact
experienced by or particular risks facing children.”56 In contrast with this
approach, many measurement initiatives still concentrate only on those
factors that directly affect the bottom line of the company. For instance,
the methodology used by RobecoSAM for the creation of DJSI “focuses on
sustainability criteria that are financially relevant to corporate performance,
valuation, and security selection. Not only does this make the results of the
CSA assessment particularly relevant for investors, but it also helps compa-
nies to focus on sustainability issues that are more directly linked to their
success as a business.”57
Second, indicators should not follow the CSR strategy of computing
positive contributions to human rights protection, such as philanthropic
activities.58 According to the GPs, “Business enterprises may undertake other
commitments or activities to support and promote human rights, which may
contribute to the enjoyment of rights. But this does not offset a failure to
respect human rights throughout their operations.”59 The Human Rights Ma-
trix, developed by the Business Leaders Initiative on Human Rights, rightly
distinguishes between two types of indicators: the Essential and the Beyond
Essential steps that a business can take to develop and implement its hu-
man rights strategy. Examples of Beyond Essential activities include diversity
programs, education or health initiatives aimed at a local community, and
participation in sector initiatives.60
Third, the literature on state-focused human rights indicators offers a
three-layered categorization of structural, process, and outcome indicators:
Structural indicators “reflect the ratification and adoption of legal instru-
ments”; process indicators measure duty bearers’ procedures to implement
their human rights commitments; and “outcome indicators capture individual
and collective achievements that reflect the state of enjoyment of human
rights in a given context.”61 Building on this literature, but adapting it to the
56. Danish Institute for Human Rights & UNICEF, Children’s Rights in Impact Assessments: A Guide
for Integrating Children’s Rights into Impact Assessments and Taking Action for Children 4
(2013).
57. RobecoSAM, Measuring Intangibles, supra note 41, at 1.
58. See the methodology proposed by Escrig-Olmedo et al. to offset positive and negative
assessments: Elena Escrig-Olmedo et al., Lights and Shadows on Sustainability Rating
Scoring, 8 Rev. Mgmt. Sci. 559 (2014).
11.
60. Business Leaders Initiative on Human Rights et al., A Guide for Integrating Human Rights into
Business Management 14–15 (2006), available at http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publica-
tions/GuideHRBusinessen.pdf; Business Leaders Initiative on Human Rights, The Human Rights
Matrix 2 (2009).
61. Human Rights Indicators, supra note 26, at 34, 36, 37. Landman and Carvalho make a
similar distinction between rights-in-principle, rights-as-policy, and rights-in-practice
indicators. See Landman & Carvalho, supra note 15, at 17.
corporate responsibility to respect human rights as laid down in the GPs (in
particular the fact that corporations are not responsible for general human
rights outcomes, but only for their human rights impacts), this article dis-
tinguishes three categories of business and human rights indicators: policy,
process, and impact indicators.62
Policy indicators appraise the extent to which a company has committed
to respect human rights. As statements of policy are usually publicly available
and easily accessible, all business and human rights measurement initiatives
include policy indicators. Yet, these indicators are rarely fully aligned with
the GPs. Existing indicators are often framed as binary options: either the
company adopted a human rights policy, or it did not. For instance, Robe-
coSAM’s CSA asks whether a company “has publicly committed to support
the Universal Declarations of Human Rights,” as well as “if [the] company
is familiar with the UN Framework and Guiding Principles on Business and
Human Rights.”63 However, the Guiding Principles are clear that the state-
ment of policy should meet five specific requirements:
[B]usiness enterprises should express their commitment to meet [their corporate]
responsibility [to respect human rights] through a statement of policy that: (a) Is
approved at the most senior level of the business enterprise; (b) Is informed by
relevant internal and/or external expertise; (c) Stipulates the enterprise’s human
rights expectations of personnel, business partners and other parties directly
linked to its operations, products or services; (d) Is publicly available and com-
municated internally and externally to all personnel, business partners and other
relevant parties; [and] (e) Is reflected in operational policies and procedures
necessary to embed it throughout the business enterprise.64
Policy indicators should abandon the binary approach and reflect this
plurality of conditions.65 Indicators RE2 of the GoodCorporation Framework
62. For a similar approach, see Human Rights & Business Project & Danish Institute for Human
Rights, Human Rights Compliance Assessment (HRCA) Quick Check 6 (2006); NYSE Euronext,
Euronext Vigeo Family: Index Rule Book 8 (2013).
63. See RobecoSAM, Corporate Sustainability Assessment, Sample Questionnaire, at 45
(2014), available at http://www.robecosam.com/images/sample-questionnaire.pdf.
65. The situation with state-focused structural indicators is similar. Most scholars use dummy
variables for ratification/non-ratification. See Linda Camp Keith, The United Nations
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Does it Make a Difference in Hu-
man Rights Behavior?, 36 J. Peace Res. 95 (1999); Oona A. Hathaway, Do Human Rights
Treaties Make a Difference?, 111 Yale L.J. 1935 (2002); Eric Neumayer, Do International
Human Rights Treaties Improve Respect for Human Rights?, 49 J. Conflict Resol. 925
(2005); Emilie Hafner-Burton & Kiyoteru Tsutsui, Human Rights in a Globalizing World:
The Paradox of Empty Promises, 110 Am. J. Soc. 1373 (2005); James Raymond Vree-
land, Political Institutions and Human Rights: Why Dictatorships Enter Into the United
Nations Convention Against Torture, 62 Int’l Org. 65 (2008). Yet, it is sensible to take
into consideration whether a treaty was only signed or also ratified, and what types of
reservations were filed at the time of ratification. See John Boli-Bennett, Human Rights
or State Expansion? Cross-National Definitions of Constitutional Rights, 1870–1970, in
Global Human Rights, supra note 15, at 173; Landman & Carvalho, supra note 15, at 85.
on Human Rights takes two steps in the right direction but falls short of fully
complying with the GPs: It asks whether “[t]he company has a publically
available policy on human rights that has been approved at [a] senior level.”66
The Reporting and Assurance Framework Initiative, led by the Mazars and
Shift organizations, and the Draft Business and Human Rights Index, proposed
by RightsBusiness, are among the few projects that take all the requirements
of the GPs into account.67 Furthermore, policy indicators should assess the
extent to which statements of policy refer to a limited or broad range of
human rights and/or stakeholders. Sustainalytics, the ESG data provider for
STOXX ESG Leaders Indices, competently checks whether companies have
a policy not only on human rights in general (indicator S.4.2.1), but also on
freedom of association (S.1.1), working conditions (S.1.1.1), elimination of
discrimination (S.1.2), the sourcing of coltan (S.2.1.3), data privacy (S.3.1.3),
and indigenous people and land rights (S.4.2.9).68
According to the GPs, statements of policy are only one part of the story.
In order to avoid infringing on the human rights of others and address adverse
human rights impacts with which they are involved, business enterprises
should also have in place two types of processes (appropriate to their size
and circumstances): (1) “[a] human rights due-diligence process to identify,
prevent, mitigate and account for how they address their impacts on human
rights,” and (2) “[p]rocesses to enable the remediation of any adverse human
rights impacts they cause or to which they contribute.”69 Process indicators
include both due diligence and remediation indicators. For instance, the
DIHR’s HRCA asks companies both whether, “[i]n countries where birth
certificates are not common, or are frequently falsified, the company has a
procedure for estimating the age of employment for young candidates, such
as average height or knowledge of historic events,”70 and whether “[w]orkers
have access to a grievance mechanism where they can report incidents of
discrimination, and they are familiar with the mechanism.”71
66. GoodCorporation, The GoodCorporation Framework on Human Rights 2 (2012), avail-

able at http://www.goodcorporation.com/documents/GCHumanRightsFramework.
pdf?dm_i=8NV,1VB4V,VE713,6P84G,1.
67. Mazars & Shift, Developing Global Standards for the Reporting and Assurance of Company
Alignment with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: A Discussion
Paper 6–8, 22 (2013); RightsBusiness, Towards a Business and Human Rights Index and
Accreditation and Certification Scheme for Business Enterprises: An Introductory Paper
4 (2013).
68. STOXX Limited, STOXX ESG Index Methodology Guide 19–20 (2014), available at http://
www.stoxx.com/download/indices/rulebooks/stoxx_esg_guide.pdf. The CR’s 100 Best
Corporate Citizens List follows a similar approach and uses policy indicators on nu-
merous human rights issues. See Corporate Citizenship Database, 2013 Data Elements,
CR Magazine (2013), available at http://www.thecro.com/files/CR%20Corporate%20
Citizenship%20Data%20Elements%202013.pdf.
69. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, supra note 3, GP15.
70. DIHR, Human Rights Compliance Assessment, supra note 62, at 19.
71. Id. at 27.
Process indicators can assess inputs—that is, the financial, human,

material, technological and information resources used for the process—or
outputs—that is, the actual completion of activities. As outputs depend on
factors that vary from place to place, there is no monotonic relationship
between inputs and outputs. The consequence is that preference should
be given to output, over input, indicators.72 Indicator HU1.d of the Global
Compact Self-Assessment Tool, which asks companies whether “workers and
managers are trained to respond to workplace emergencies; first aid kits and
fire extinguishers are readily available; and escape exits are clearly marked
and free from obstruction,”73 is more informative than indicator S09-02 of
the KPIs for ESG 3.0 proposed by the Society of Investment Professionals in
Germany in conjunction with the European Federation of Financial Analysts
Societies, which asks companies to report the “total spending in monetary
terms i.e. currency on maintenance and safety of production sites, plants
etc.”74
Impact indicators concentrate on the adverse human rights impact with
which the company is involved. The corporate responsibility to respect human
rights “requires that business enterprises: (a) Avoid causing or contributing
to adverse human rights impacts through their own activities, and address
such impacts when they occur [and] (b) [s]eek to prevent or mitigate adverse
human rights impacts that are directly linked to their operations, products
or services by their business relationships, even if they have not contributed
to those impacts.”75 A good example of an impact indicator is EO100™
Standard’s Performance Target 2.3, which checks if the “operator has not
been found guilty (i.e., final verdict of guilty after exhausting all appeals) of
a violation of human rights for any of its activities in the country of operation,
within the previous three years.”76 While impact indicators should evidently
represent a cornerstone of human rights measurement, assessing causation
and contribution of—or linkage to—adverse human rights impact is difficult
and often highly controversial. The most daunting methodological and practi-
cal problems associated with comparing the human rights performance of
different companies will be addressed in Section IV.
Before moving on, it is worth stressing why defining a clear distinction
between policy, process, and impact indicators is particularly important.
First of all, it helps to create a comprehensive set of indicators that covers
72. Human Rights Indicators, supra note 26, at 37.

73. UN Global Compact, Global Compact Self Assessment Tool (2010), available at http://www.
globalcompactselfassessment.org/.
74. DVFA & EFFAS, Key Performance Indicators for Environmental, Social, and Goverance Issues: A
Guideline for the Integration of ESG into Financial Analysis and Corporate Valuation 18 (2010),
available at http://www.effas-esg.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/KPIs_for_ESG_3_0_Fi-
nal.pdf.
75. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, supra note 3, GP13.
76. Equitable Origin, EO100 Standard 27 (2012).
all different aspects of the corporate responsibility to respect human rights.77

Second, it compensates for the limitations of each type of indicator: On the
one hand, policy and process indicators reward statements and procedures
that are not necessarily related to improvements on the ground;78 on the other
hand, impact indicators focus on past corporate behavior and therefore offer
imperfect guidance with respect to changes in corporate attitude and future
performance. Third, the distinction permits research on the consequences of
different policies and processes on actual impacts. Are good scores on impact
indicators associated with good scores on policy and process indicators?
B. Open Questions
Human rights scholars agree that conceptual clarity is a fundamental prereq-

uisite for meaningful measurement: “[C]areful conceptualization is not an
afterthought. If one’s measure is not carefully conceptualized, it will likely
suffer grave risks to validity, no matter how artfully it is later operational-
ized.”79 Unfortunately, while the GPs offer some guidance on what business
and human rights indicators should look like, they also leave many questions
unanswered. As acknowledged by RightsBusiness, the GPs “do not appear
to operate or have been designed as an index and are not always expressed
in a measurable format. This may allow for some choice in selecting metrics
for the index and being flexible about a lack of granularity and specificity
and measurement.”80
77. For a similar argument with respect to state-focused human rights indicators, see Hans-
Otto Sano & Lone Lindholt, Human Rights Indicators: Country Data and Methodology
2000, Danish Inst. for Human Rights 67 (2000).
78. For a similar argument with respect to rules-based indicators of governance, see Daniel
Kaufmann & Aart Kraay, Governance Indicators: Where Are We, Where Should We Be
Going?, 23 World Bank Res. Observer 1, 8 (2008).
79. David L. Richards, Measuring Human Rights: A Review Essay, 12 Hum. Rts. & Hum.
Welfare 15 (2012). See also Scarritt, supra note 15, at 117; Herbert F. Spirer, Violations of
Human Rights—How Many?: The Statistical Problems of Measuring Such Infractions Are
Tough, but Statistical Science Is Equal to It, 49 Am. J. Econ. & Soc. 199 (1990); Richard
P. Claude & Thomas B. Jabine, Exploring Human Rights Issues with Statistics, in Human
Rights and Statistics: Getting the Record Straight 5, 12 (Thomas B. Jabine & Richard P.
Claude eds., 1992); Robert Justin Goldstein, The Limitations of Using Quantitative Data
in Studying Human Rights Abuses, in Human Rights and Statistics, supra, at 35, 37; Russel
Lawrence Barsh, Measuring Human Rights: Problems of Methodology and Purpose, 15
Hum. Rts. Q. 87, 92 (1993); Todd Landman, Alexandra Wilde & Emilie Filmer-Wilson,
Indicators for Human Rights Based Approaches to Development in UNDP Programming:
A Users’ Guide, UNDP, 11–12 (2006), available at http://gaportal.org/sites/default/files/
HRBA%20indicators%20guide.pdf; Yasmine Ergas, Human Rights Impact: Developing
an Agenda for Interdisciplinary, International Research, 1 J. Hum. Rts. Prac. 459, 461
(2009).
80. RightsBusiness, supra note 67, at 5.
What this means is that the production of numerous business and human
rights indicators is not a merely technical exercise, but an implicit normative
process in which new standards are actually created.81 Two examples should
suffice to show that producers of business and human rights indicators can-
not avoid making difficult and controversial normative decisions.
As resources are scarce and time is limited, producers of indicators of-
ten must decide on which human rights, and which aspects of the GPs, to
concentrate.82 With respect to which human rights to prioritize, the GPs are
clear that “the severity of a potential adverse human rights impact is the most
important factor in determining the scale and complexity of the processes
the enterprise needs to have in place in order to know and show that it is
respecting human rights.”83 Yet, the concept of severity is open to different
interpretations. FTSE4Good Inclusion Criteria for the Global Resource Sec-
tor appropriately require “a stated commitment to respecting indigenous
peoples’ rights.” However, no other vulnerable stakeholder is taken into
consideration.84 Labor indicators for RobecoSAM’s CSA cover nondiscrimi-
nation and freedom of association, but neglect issues as important as child
labor and forced labor.85 Are these omissions justified?
With respect to which aspects of the GPs should be given priority,
producers of indicators are often lured into the strategy of concentrating on
those facets that can more easily be measured. Yet, “not everything that can
be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”86 The
risk is that those aspects that are more difficult to measure will fly under the
radar and will be tacitly ignored.87 For instance, GRI indicator G4-HR10 asks
companies to “[r]eport the percentage of new suppliers that were screened
using human rights criteria.”88 The indicator arguably operationalizes the
due diligence requirement to “[s]eek to prevent or mitigate adverse hu-
man rights impacts that are directly linked to their operations, products or
services by their business relationships, even if they have not contributed
to those impacts.”89 However, it focuses on only one part of the story. It is
81. Rosga & Satterthwaie, supra note 27, at 295.

82. Some scholars argue that using a “core set” of human rights to measure the general
phenomenon of human rights performance is possible. See, e.g., Andrew D. McNitt,
Measuring Human Rights: Problems and Possibilities, 15 Pol’y Stud. J. 71, 73 (1986).
Others disagree, see McCamant, supra note 24; Harry M. Scoble & Laurie S. Wiseberg,
Problems of Comparative Research on Human Rights, in Global Human Rights, supra
note 15, at 147, 150–51.
83. The Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human Rights, supra note 4, at 19.
84. FTSE, FTSE4Good Index Series: Inclusion Criteria 4 (2013).
85. RobecoSAM, Sample Questionnaire, supra note 63.
86. William Bruce Cameron, Informal Sociology: A Casual Introduction to Sociological Thinking
13 (1963).
87. Mohamed Chelli & Yves Gendron, Sustainability Ratings and the Disciplinary Power of
the Ideology of Numbers, 112 J. Bus. Ethics 187 (2013).
88. G4 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines, supra note 33, at 74.
good practice to screen suppliers, but the most important consideration is a

company’s willingness to act in case of controversial findings. The indicator
implicitly incentivizes companies to screen suppliers without taking actions
after the screening.
Second, adverse human rights impacts have different dimensions: se-
verity (killing two union leaders is arguably worse than wounding them),
frequency (wounding a hundred employees is arguably worse than wound-
ing ten), and range (wounding three saboteurs and their seven innocent
children is arguably worse than wounding ten saboteurs).90 In the business
and human rights community, no consensus exists regarding how many
dimensions impact indicators should take into consideration, or regarding
how these dimensions should be weighed against each other.91 How does
one compare the killing of two union leaders with the wounding of twenty
indigenous women? The structure of Oxfam’s Behind the Brands Scorecard
is such that no “artificial” weighting was applied. This means that “[e]ach
indicator [was] weighted equally within each indicator category; each sub-
indicator [was] weighted equally within each indicator.”92 Against Oxfam’s
position, it is worth stressing that equal weighing is as artificial as any other
option—in this case, a non-decision actually is a decision. Suffice it to say
that the consequence of equal weighting of indicators and sub-indicators
is that “commitment to uphold the GPs” originally weighed 12.5 out of
100, while “endorse[ment] of the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles”
weighed 20 out of 100.93
Unfortunately, there is no correct answer to these normative questions.
Human rights experts themselves disagree on how to interpret “severity,”
on the priority to be given to specific aspects of the GPs over others, and
on the importance of different human rights or different dimensions of the
same right.94 Yet, the drafting history of the GPs teaches us that there can be
90. George A. Lopez & Michael Stohl, Problems of Concept and Measurement in the Study
of Human Rights, in Human Rights and Statistics, supra note 79, at 216, 224; James M. Mc-
Cormick & Neil J. Mitchell, Human Rights Violations, Umbrella Concepts, and Empirical
Analysis, 49 World Pol. 510, 513 (1997). Ruggie uses a roughly similar categorization
with a different terminology (scale, scope, and irremediable character). See Guiding
Principles on Business and Human Rights, supra note 3, GP 14; see also The Corporate
Responsibility to Respect Human Rights, supra note 4, at 19.
91. Barsh, supra note 79, at 100; Dipak K. Gupta, Albert J. Jongman & Alex P. Schmid,
Creating a Composite Index for Assessing Country Performance in the Field of Human
Rights: Proposal for a New Methodology, 16 Hum. Rts. Q. 131, 136 (1994).
92. Scorecard Methodology, supra note 53, at 8.
93. Draft Scorecard Questions, Oxfam (2012) (on file with author). Oxfam subsequently
changed the scoring system; a commitment to uphold the GPs currently weighs 25 out
of 100. See Behind the Brands: About, Interactive Excel Spreadsheet of Indicator Data,
Oxfam (2013) available at http://www.behindthebrands.org/en-gb/about.
94. As an example of the controversies generated by the GPs, see Human Rights Obligations
of Business: Beyond the Corporate Responsibility to Respect? (Surya Deva & David Bilchitz
eds., 2013), and the comments on the book by Ruggie himself: Letter from John G.
legitimate answers as a result of transparent and participatory processes. In

the end, this was Ruggie’s secret to success. The authority of the GPs, to a
large extent, stems from the perception that their drafting process was more
transparent and participatory than any prior initiative.95
Ruggie is often pleased to recall that the GPs were developed “with
the involvement of all stakeholder groups, and nearly fifty international
consultations on five continents.”96 The lesson to be learnt is that the ques-
tions outlined above should not be answered by a group of like-minded
individuals, however knowledgeable and authoritative they may be.97 Rather,
decisions must be the object of a genuine debate among various stakehold-
ers, including affected individuals.98 The work of the Access to Medicine
Foundation in producing the Access to Medicine Index (AtMI), a widely
respected and influential ranking of the largest pharmaceutical companies’
efforts to improve access to medicine in developing countries, offers a good
example in this respect.99 One of the distinguishing features of the AtMI is
the rigorous and participatory Index cycle, a two-year process of consultation
with experts and stakeholders to review the previous Index and prepare the
methodology for the next one. The Expert Review Committee (ERC), which
functions as the strategic advisory committee for the Index methodology, is
made up of individuals from a variety of stakeholder groups. To complement
the work of the ERC, the Foundation hosts several events over the course of
the Index cycle to gain insights on diverse perspectives and developments
in the access to medicine landscape.100 The history of the Reporting and As-
surance Frameworks Initiative (RAFI)—a recent project by Shift and Mazars
Ruggie, Comments on Human Rights Obligations of Business: Beyond the Corporate

Responsibility to Respect (17 Dec. 2013), available at http://business-humanrights.org/
sites/default/files/media/ruggie-comment-surya-deva-david-bilchitz.pdf.
95. Aaronson & Higham, supra note 29, at 345.
96. John G. Ruggie, Keynote Address at the Annual Plenary of the Voluntary Principles on
Security and Human Rights, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Hague, Netherlands (13
Mar. 2013); see also John G. Ruggie, Keynote Address at Association of International
Petroleum Negotiators, Spring 2012 Conference, Washington, D.C. (20 Apr. 2012).
97. The academic literature on CSR offers some interesting examples of scientific methodolo-
gies to assess the construct validity of measures for responsible corporate behavior. See,
for instance, the standard scale development process used by Duygu Turker, Measuring
Corporate Social Responsibility, 85 J. Bus. Ethics 411 (2009). Similar strategies could be
used in the business and human rights field to develop draft measurement scales to be
subsequently tested through wider consultations.
98. For a similar argument with respect to state-focused human rights indicators, see Barsh,
supra note 79, at 101; Jan Robert Suesser & Raul Suarez de Miguel, Metagora: An
Experiment in the Measurement of Democratic Governance, in Statistical Methods for
Human Rights 157, 171 (Jana Asher et al. eds., 2008).
99. For a general assessment of the AtMI, see Jamie Attard, Access to Medicine Index: Can
a Global Scorecard Framework Increase Access to Essential Medicines in Developing
Countries?, 5 Sanford J. Pub. Pol’y 1 (2014).
100. Access to Medicine Foundation, Methodology Report 2013 for the 2014 Access to Medicine Index
30–35 (2013), available at http://www.accesstomedicineindex.org/sites/2015.atmindex.
org/files/methodology_report_2013_for_the_2014_access_to_medicine_index_6.pdf.
aiming to develop public reporting and assurance frameworks based on the

UN Guiding Principles—is another example of the perceived importance
of consultative processes. RAFI was launched at the beginning of 2013 as a
yearly project with a primarily Asian focus.101 After some criticism due to a
lack of meaningful participatory engagement,102 the process was lengthened
and consultations were enlarged to encompass the whole world.103
V. Challenges to the Validity of Business and Human

Rights Indicators
Indicators can be appraised on the basis of different criteria, such as policy-

relevance, cost, timeliness, and sensitiveness. This section focuses on what
is widely considered the most important feature of a “good” indicator:
validity. A valid indicator is an indicator that measures what it purports to
measure.104 The next two sub-parts describe the most daunting methodological
and practical challenges to the production of valid indicators of corporate
respect for human rights.
A. Methodological Challenges
As with any simplification and standardization process the production of

indicators may result in large distortions. Two of the most important method-
ological challenges in producing valid business and human rights indicators
are omitted variables and variance truncation.
1. Omitted Variables
As a proxy measure of corporate human rights performance, GRI indicator
G4-HR8 asks companies to “[r]eport the total number of identified incidents
101. Mazars & Shift, Developing Global Standards for the Reporting and Assurance of Com-
pany Alignment with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, supra
note 67, at 5–6.
102. All comments to RAFI are collected at the following webpage: Business and Human
Rights Reporting and Assurance Frameworks Initiative (“RAFI”), Business & Human Rights
Resource Centre, available at http://www.business-humanrights.org/Documents/RAFI.
103. Mazars & Shift, The Business and Human Rights Reporting and Assurance Frameworks Initiative
(“RAFI”): Project Framing Document 3, 5 (2013), available at http://shiftproject.org/sites/
default/files/RAFI%20Framing%20Document%202014%2001%20Final_0.pdf.
104. Barsh, supra note 79, at 95; Todd Landman & Julia Häusermann, Map-Making and
Analysis of the Main International Initiatives on Developing Indicators on Democracy
and Good Governance, University of Essex Human Rights Centre, ¶ 26 (2003). On mea-
surement validity generally, see Robert Adcock & David Collier, Measurement Validity:
A Shared Standard for Qualitative and Quantitative Research, 95 Am. Pol. Sci. Rev. 529
(2001).
of violations involving rights of indigenous peoples.”105 This indicator risks

being an invalid measure of the adverse human rights impacts of corpora-
tions because it does not take into account numerous contextual factors that
can affect the “score” of a company. First of all, human rights abuses can
saturate.106 For instance, a reduction in the number of incidents could result
from the previous (unjustified) arrest of all indigenous leaders. What appears
as a good score on G4-HR8—a low number of incidents—would not derive
from an improvement of the situation, but from the perverse effects of earlier
abuses. Second, data collection is inevitably biased toward events that oc-
cur, not events that are averted. Since a policy of intimidation can prevent
local communities from protesting and registering complaints, less abuses
can be the consequence of self-censure, rather than appropriate human
rights due diligence. What appears as a good score on G4-HR8 would not
derive from responsible behavior, but from a climate of repression.107 Third,
some companies have transparent complaint mechanisms and operate in
countries where human rights defenders have freedom to operate. In these
cases, zero—or nearly zero—abuses pass without documentation. Other
companies adopt a culture of secrecy and/or operate in closed societies.
In these cases, substantial abuses can remain unknown. This asymmetry
produces the “paradox of human rights statistics,” according to which “less
information on rights violations may imply the existence of more viola-
tions.”108 What appears as a good score on G4-HR8 would not derive from
few adverse human rights impacts but from lack of transparency. Many other
factors can affect a company’s score on G4-HR8: Some companies face
more difficult environments (repressive regimes), more violent resentment
(aggressive opposition), or more subtle strategies from opponents (sabotages).
How should these factors be taken into account?
One potential solution to the problem of omitted variables is to not
use indicators to make comparisons between companies, but only to track
corporate progress over time. A company’s context of operation usually does
not change significantly from one year to the other, and this should allow
the comparability of longitudinal scores. If one wants to compare different
companies, methodological challenges can be limited by using sector- and/
105. G4 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines, supra note 33, at 73.

106. I. Richard Savage, Hard-Soft Problems, 80 J. Am. Stat. Ass’n 1, 5 (1985); Jorge L. Romeu,
Statistical Thinking and Data Analysis: Enhancing Human Rights Work, in Statistical
Methods for Human Rights, supra note 98, at 65, 69.
107. Goldstein, supra note 79, at 51; Claude & Jabine, Exploring Human Rights Issues with
Statistics, supra note 79, at 21; Lopez & Stohl, supra note 90, at 218; UNDP, Using
Indicators for Human Rights Accountability, in Human Development Report 90 (2000),
available at http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/reports/261/hdr_2000_en.pdf.
108. Spagnoli, supra note 23, at 15. See also Goldstein, supra note 79, at 45; Barsh, supra
note 79, at 100; Philip Alston, Towards a Human Rights Accountability Index, 1 J. Hum.
Dev. 249, 255 (2000).
or country-specific indicators. Companies operating in the same sectors and/

or countries often face similar contextual factors. Sector- or country-level
indicators would therefore permit partial control of these variables. It makes
much more sense to compare two mining companies operating in Chad than
a mining company operating in Argentina and a garment factory with suppli-
ers in Bangladesh. Lastly, indicators should be accompanied with contextual
information in narrative form. The International Integrated Reporting <IR>
Framework explicitly recognizes that “suitable quantitative indicators” should
be “[p]resented with qualitative information to provide context and improve
meaningfulness. Relevant qualitative information includes an explanation
of: measurement methods and underlying assumptions.”109 The authors of
KPI for ESG 3.0 share this view and affirm that they “are fully aware that
some aspects cannot be expressed sufficiently in ‘numbers alone.’ Moreover,
they fully accept the fact that management reserves and deserves the right
to put performance data into context and provide explanations. For those
aspects which require further context, Key Performance Narratives (KPN) are
included. KPNs typically consist of 1–2 specific questions which call for a
precise answer with a limit of words.”110
2. Variance Truncation and False Precision

A potential problem of any measurement tool is insufficient sensitivity.
Variance truncation is the degree to which collected information is forced
into a limited number of categories—such as in a scale from 1 to 5—thus
inevitably placing items that are different into the same category.111 Taking
an example from state-focused measures, an indicator that compares the
yearly performance of Norway and Somalia on a 1 to 5 human rights scale
would not detect any difference between Somalia in 2008, which might
have been a promising year for Somali standards, and Somalia in 2012. Both
years would still require a score of 5 in comparison with the 1 of Norway.
Similarly, what happens in a 1 to 5 scale indicator of corporate impact on
indigenous rights when a company moves from displacing 1,000 people
109. International Integrated Reporting Council, The International <IR> Framework 31 (2013),
available at http://www.theiirc.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/13-12-08-THE-INTER-
NATIONAL-IR-FRAMEWORK-2-1.pdf.
110. DVFA & EFFAS, supra note 74, at 7. A similar approach is suggested by IPIECA (the
global oil and gas industry association for environmental and social issues), according
to which, “Because of the complexity and local dimension of these [social] issues, the
majority of indicators in this section [on social and economic indicators] are based on
qualitative descriptions of a company’s management approach”: IPIECA et al., Oil and Gas
Industry Guidance on Voluntary Sustainability Reporting 84 (2010), available at http://www.
ipieca.org/publication/oil-and-gas-industry-guidance-voluntary-sustainability-reporting-
2010-update.
111. Landman, Wilde & Wilson, supra note 79, at 10–11.
one year to 10,000 the following year? What if 1,000 displaced people had
already warranted a score of 5?112
One potential solution to variance truncation is the employment of
wider scales. For instance, in order to populate the Euronext Vigeo Indices,
Vigeo assigns a human rights score ranging from 0 to 100 to more than
2,000 companies.113 However, this strategy risks falling victim to another
problem: false precision. At the conceptual level, is it meaningful to say that
two companies have freedom of association scores of 78 and 85? What does
it mean to say that there is three times more freedom to unionize in one
company than in another? At the practical level, more precise scores require
better data. Yet, even with respect to state-focused measures, which rely on
more systematic and reliable records, previous analysis has shown that “the
available sources of systematic information are neither rich enough, reliable
enough in type of content offered (e.g., qualitative descriptions of abusive
episodes, numerical estimates of victims, etc.), nor consistent enough in the
way that similar episodes are described (no matter how) either within the
same country or across countries, to support a more-finely-tuned indicator
than currently exists at any acceptable level of reliability.”114
Translating respect for human rights into numerical scales is thus a
problematic endeavor. On the one hand, small differences in human rights
scores between companies or over time are unlikely to be perceived as
credible measures of genuine variation; on the other hand, large differences
would likely be obvious even without the use of indicators. Business and
human rights indicators risk ending up documenting, in a formal way, what
everybody already knows.115
B. Practical Difficulties
Any good measurement relies on good information. Unfortunately, business

and human rights data suffer from significant limitations.116 The main sources
of information on corporate human rights performance are corporate self-
reporting and third-party documentation.
112. I thank Patrick Ball for useful comments on these examples.

113. NYSE Euronext, supra note 62, at 8–9. The same range is used by RightsBusiness, supra
note 67, at 6.
114. Richards, supra note 79, at 19.
115. Goldstein, supra note 79, at 55. See also Judith Eleanor Innes, Human Rights Reporting
as a Policy Tool: An Examination of the State Department Country Reports, in Human
Rights and Statistics, supra note 79, at 235, 252; Lopez & Stohl, supra note 90, at 229;
Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Report of the Workshop on Measurement and Human
Rights 6 (2006).
116. See Spirer, supra note 79, at 199; Kenneth A. Bollen, Political Rights and Political Liberties
in Nations: An Evaluation of Human Rights Measures, 1950 to 1984, in Human Rights
and Statistics, supra note 79, at 188, 189; Goldstein, supra note 79, at 41; Landman &
Häusermann, supra note 104, ¶ 99.
1. Corporate Self-Reporting
Companies increasingly include human rights information in their sustain-
ability reports and on their websites.117 In addition, they sometimes release
facts and figures about specific projects or countries of operation.118 Corporate
self-reporting has three important advantages: (1) Companies are evidently
best placed to know their own human rights situation; (2) information is
easily accessible; and (3) figures are generally standardized—because most
companies report on the same issues in a similar way—and can be aggregated
for comparability. Corporate self-reporting is troublesome with regard to its
scope and trustworthiness.119 First, while consistent data to populate policy
indicators already exists, companies disclose little information on their hu-
man rights due diligence procedures and almost nothing on impacts (with a
few exceptions, such as employee fatalities). Indeed, “It is unreasonable to
expect a business enterprise to report on adverse impacts especially where
they are also illegal.”120 Second, self-reported data is difficult to verify and
often contested, in particular with respect to process indicators. For instance,
the company may state that it has consulted with all affected stakeholders,
but civil society organizations may argue that consultations excluded some
vulnerable groups. An example is the conflict between Mining Watch Canada
and Barrick Gold concerning, amongst other things, the consultations around
the development of a grievance mechanism for the Porgera mine in Papua
New Guinea.121
A partial solution to the incompleteness and unreliability of self-reporting
may come from recent and ongoing regulatory innovations that require
corporate disclosure of sustainability information. Today, reporting on hu-
man rights is compulsory under a “comply or explain” approach for: listed
companies in the United Kingdom;122 listed companies and non-listed
companies with more 500 employees in France;123 state-owned enterprises
117. For surveys on human rights reporting trends, see Global Reporting Initiative & Roberts
Envtl. Ctr., Reporting on Human Rights (2008), available at https://www.globalreporting.
org/resourcelibrary/Reporting-On-Human-Rights.pdf; J. Emil Morhardt, General Dis-
regard for Details of GRI Human Rights Reporting by Large Corporations, 10 Global
Bus. Rev. 141 (2009); Elizabeth Umlas, Corporate Human Rights Reporting: An Analysis of
Current Trends (2009), available at https://www.globalreporting.org/resourcelibrary/Hu-
man_Rights_analysis_trends.pdf.
118. See, e.g., Talking the Human Rights Walk, supra note 10, at 33.
119. For a more detailed discussion of the issue, see William S. Laufer, Social Accountability
and Corporate Greenwashing, 43 J. Bus. Ethics 253 (2003).
120. ITUC et al., supra note 25, at 5.
121. Letter from Mining Watch Canada, to Dr. Navanethem Pillay, UN High Commissioner for
Human Rights (19 Mar. 2013); Letter from Barrick Gold Corporation, to Dr. Navanethem
Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (22 Mar. 2013).
122. Companies Act, 2006, S.I. 2008/393, art. 414C(7)(b)(iii) (U.K.).
123. Code De Commerce [C. com.] art. L225-102-1 (Fr.); Décret No. 2012-557 du 24 Avril
2012 Relatif aux Obligations de Transparence des Entreprises en Matière Sociale et
Environnementale [Decree Number 2012-557 of 24 April 2013 Relating to Transparency
Obligations of Companies in Social and Environmental Matters] art. 1.II.3, Journal Officiel
de la République Française [Official Gazette of France] 26 Apr. 2012 , p. 7,439.
in Sweden;124 state-owned enterprises, listed companies, and non-listed

companies that exceed at least two of the following three size limits (to-
tal assets/liabilities of DKK 143 million, net revenue of DKK 286 million,
an average of 250 full-time employees) in Denmark.125 In April 2014, the
European Parliament adopted a Directive that requires the largest 6,000
European companies to publish a non-financial statement—always under a
“comply or explain” framework—containing information relating to respect
for human rights, among other topics.126 Other jurisdictions concentrate
on specific human rights issues. The Netherlands requires companies that
receive financial support from the state, such as export credit, to report on
their efforts against child labor;127 every retail seller and manufacturer doing
business in California, and with annual worldwide gross receipts that exceed
$100 million, shall disclose its efforts to eradicate slavery and human traf-
ficking from its direct supply chain of tangible goods offered for sale;128 any
US person whose aggregate investment in Burma exceeds $500,000 shall
provide a concise summary of its due diligence policies and procedures,
including those related to risk and impact assessments, that address opera-
tional impacts on human rights, worker rights, and/or the environment in
Burma.129 The problem with these initiatives is that they offer little guidance
on what exact data must be disclosed. Standardization and comparability
of information are therefore not guaranteed.130 In addition, auditors often
124. Government of Sweden, Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communications, Guidelines for Ex-
ternal Reporting by State-Owned Companies 3 (2007), available at http://www.government.
se/content/1/c6/09/41/25/56b7ebd4.pdf.
125. Danish Financial Statements Act, 2009, § 99a; Danish Ministry of Business and Growth, Cor-
porate Social Responsibility and Reporting in Denmark: Impact of the Third Year Subject
to the Legal Requirements for Reporting on RSI in the Danish Financial Statements Act,
at 29 (2013), available at http://samfundsansvar.dk/file/358879/csr_rapport_2013_eng.
pdf.
126. Ruggie shares the view that the Directive will “enable companies to report on human
rights related risk in a manner that is…comparable across companies.” Letter from John
G. Ruggie, to Rt. Hon. Dr. Vince Cable, MP, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation
and Skills (22 Jan. 2014).
127. Letter from the Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations and the Secretary of State
for Economic Affairs, to the President of the House of Representatives (16 June 2009),
available at https://zoek.officielebekendmakingen.nl/dossier/31263/kst-31263-37.html/.
128. California Transparency in Supply Chains Act of 2010, S. 657, 111th Cong. (2010).
129. Office of the Spokesperson, Reporting Requirements on Responsible Investment in Burma,
U.S. Department of State, 23 May 2013, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2013/05/209869.
htm.
130. See, for instance, the debate over the first reports submitted by US investors in Burma: First
Myanmar Investment Disclosures Present Opportunities and Challenges EarthRights Inter-
national (10 Jul. 2013), available at http://www.earthrights.org/campaigns/first-myanmar-
investment-disclosures-present-opportunities-and-challenges; Jonathan Kaufman, Coke’s
Report on Responsible Business Practices in Myanmar Sets Standard for Transparency
on Both Successes and Failures, EarthRights International (20 Dec. 2013), available at
http://www.earthrights.org/blog/cokes-report-responsible-business-practices-myanmar-
sets-standard-transparency-both-successes.
do not possess sufficient human rights expertise to verify the truthfulness of

the information reported.131
2.. Third-party Documentation

An increasing number of external sources–such as nongovernmental orga-
nizations, the media, international organizations, state agencies, and tribu-
nals–offer information on the human rights performance of corporations.
While third-party reports often provide invaluably forthright assessments of
corporate behavior, the strategy of using these sources to produce valid busi-
ness and human rights indicators suffers from numerous drawbacks. First of
all, reports are frequently expressed in narrative or anecdotal form, which is
difficult to aggregate and standardize for comparative purposes.132 Second,
the accuracy of the information cannot always be verified. Independent ac-
counts are the object of contestation as fierce as corporate self-disclosure.133
Third, these sources inevitably portray only a partial picture of a company’s
performance. They never cover all corporate operations, and their findings
may reflect the exception—an extraordinarily rosy or gloomy picture—rather
than the rule. Indeed, many human rights abuses go unnoticed because of
the risks incurred by witnesses and victims (torture, disappearances, and
repression), and because of the sheer number of corporations operating
worldwide. Human rights scholars have long questioned the ability of hu-
man rights NGOs to comprehensively monitor human rights protection in
less than 200 states.134 What about 100,000 multinational corporations, with
more than 900,000 subsidiaries, and millions of subcontractors?135 Fourth, a
lot of information is lost in translation. Kenneth Bollen counted six levels of
information on human rights violations: all violations, recorded violations,
known and accessible violations, locally reported violations (nation-state),
internationally reported violations, and violations reported in foreign sources,
such as US sources (see figure below).136
131. ITUC et al., supra note 25, at 5; Letter from Accountability Counsel, to Bahtiar Manurung
and Anna Triponel 3, 6–7 (26 June 2013).
132. See Human Rights Watch, The Price of Oil: Corporate Responsibility and Human Rights Vio-
lations in Nigeria’s Oil Producing Communities (1999), available at http://www.hrw.org/
reports/1999/nigeria/nigeria0199.pdf; Human Rights Watch, “What is a House Without
Food?” Mozambique’s Coal Mining Boom and Resettlements (2013), available at http://www.
hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/mozambique0513_Upload_0.pdf.
133. See the numerous corporate responses against allegations of human rights abuses posted
on the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre’s website: Business & Human Rights
Resource Centre, available at http://www.business-humanrights.org/.
134. Todd Landman, Measuring Human Rights: Principle, Practice, and Policy, 26 Hum. Rts.
Q. 906, 923 (2004).
135. Unavailability of reliable information across a large number of companies has long been
recognized as one of the main problems in measuring corporate social responsibility.
See Walter F. Abbott & R. Joseph Monsen, On the Measurement of Corporate Social
Responsibility: Self-Reported Disclosures as a Method of Measuring Corporate Social
Involvement, 22 Acad. Mgmt. J. 501, 502 (1979).
136. Bollen, supra note 116, at 198.
Bollen’s Levels of Human Rights Information and Reporting
All characteristics (recorded and unrecorded)

IDEAL
Recorded
Accessible
Locally reported
Internationally reported
US reported
BIASED
See Kenneth A. Bollen, Political Rights and Political Liberities in Nations: An Evalu-
ation of Rights Measures, 1950 to 1984, in Human Rights and Statistics: Guiding and
Record Straight 198 (1992)
The problem with these six layers is that some information has a higher
chance of passing from one box to the next, and thus, smaller boxes are
inevitably biased—that is, they do not embody a representative sample of
wider reality. Examples of features affecting the likelihood of business and
human rights data moving from larger to smaller boxes include: deviation
from past practices (new abuses cause more condemnation than the continu-
ation of past abuses), local information technology, openness of a region
to the wider world, media coverage (which is itself dependent on wealth
and strategic significance), and windows of opportunity (large brand name
companies are more likely to attract media and civil society attention).
Measurement initiatives that use third-party information can employ
three different tactics to offset the problems outlined above. First of all,
overreliance on one type of external source should be avoided. Human
rights researchers have advanced from the first attempts to measure po-
litical violence, which were based on data from the New York Times.137
For instance, RepRisk, an ESG data provider, “conducts [machine-coded]
searches for negative stakeholder sentiment in 14 languages across thousands
of sources.”138 Second, potential manipulation of raw information can be
137. Charles Lewis Taylor & Michael C. Hudson, World Handbook of Political and Social
Indicators II: Section I. Cross-National Aggregate Data, at 118 (DTIC Document 1970).
For a general critique of existing methods that use newspaper sources, see Joe Fower-
aker & Roman Krznaric, Measuring Liberal Democratic Performance: An Empirical and
Conceptual Critique, 48 Pol. Stud. 759, 766 (2000).
138. RepRisk, RepRisk Methodology, available at http://www.reprisk.com/methodology/.
detected through the use of statistical methods. Falsification leaves its mark
on human rights records.139 Examples of “manipulation footprints” are: lack
of data on a known phenomenon, sudden jumps in related data categories,
sudden cessation of a series, and suspicious proximity of data to official
benchmarks. Third, standardization of data reporting and categorization
would help make the most of available resources. It is particularly difficult
to work with already processed data that is available from different sources
using different definitions, such as newspapers, archives, police files, and
reports from NGOs. The amount of work to translate this information into
standardized categories is “mind-boggling.”140 The solution with respect to
state violations has been the creation of a common reporting format, named
HURIDOCS, which establishes uniform but flexible guidelines for data col-
lection and reporting of human rights violations.141 It would be particularly
interesting to establish similar initiatives in the business and human rights
domain via the use of harmonized forms to register events and an agreed-
upon vocabulary surrounding adverse corporate human rights impacts.142
VI. Challenges to the Emancipatory Potential of Business

and Human Rights Indicators
Human rights are socially constructed norms whose fundamental objective

is to give voice to the voiceless. This section explores the potential prob-
lems arising from the fact that business and human rights indicators are not
technical, politically neutral tools. Rather, they can alter power relations.
As indicators become increasingly central to business and human rights
governance systems, “it is critical to examine how they are produced and
how the forms of knowledge they create affect global power relationships.”143
139. Douglas A. Samuelson & Herbert F. Spirer, Use of Incomplete and Distorted Data in
Inference About Human Rights Violations, in Human Rights and Statistics, supra note 79,
at 62.
140. Goldstein, supra note 79, at 47.
141. Judith Dueck, HURIDOCS Standard Formats As a Tool in the Documentation of Human
Rights Violations, in Human Rights and Statistics, supra note 79, at 127. On the impor-
tance of utilizing uniform standards for human rights reporting, see Randy B. Reiter, M.
V. Zunzunegui & Jose Quiroga, Guidelines for Field Reporting of Basic Human Rights
Violations, 8 Hum. Rts. Q. 628 (1986).
142. This strategy would run parallel to those initiatives that reduce duplication of efforts in
ethical trade auditing. See, e.g., Sedex, What We Do, available at http://www.sedexglobal.
com/about-sedex/what-we-do/; Fair Factories Clearinghouse, Software Partners for Re-
sponsible International Workplaces, available at http://www.fairfactories.org; Ecodesk,
The Science of Sustainable Supply Chain, available at http://www.ecodesk.com.
143. Sally Engle Merry, Measuring the World: Indicators, Human Rights, and Global Gover-
nance, 52 Current Anthropology S83, S85 (2011). For a similar concern, see also Rosga
& Satterthwaie, supra note 27, at 255; Bal Sokhi-Bulley, Governing (Through) Rights:
Statistics as Technologies of Governmentality, 20 Soc. & Legal Stud. 139 (2011); Galit A.
Sarfaty, Regulating Through Numbers: A Case Study of Corporate Sustainability Reporting,
53 Va. J. Int’l L. 575, 609 (2012); Davis, Kingsbury & Merry, supra note 26, at 80–83.
First of all, as highlighted in Section IV, business and human rights

norms, such as the GPs, are often too vague for unmediated translation into
operational indicators. Those who are in control of the production of indica-
tors thus tacitly, but inevitably, make important normative decisions, even
if they are sold as merely objective and technical ones.144 As highlighted
by Navy Pillay, “Devising a policy or statistical indicator is not a norm or
value-neutral exercise.”145 Acting in this way, the producers of indicators
may surreptitiously become the winners in the struggle over the creation
and acceptance of new business and human rights norms. Accordingly, more
legitimate bodies, such as the Human Rights Council or national parliaments,
lose out because of their inability to come up with more precise definitions.
In addition, the mere “language” of indicators, with its seemingly ob-
jective aspect, may make it more difficult for human rights abusers to be
held accountable.146 There are at least three ways in which this possibility
can materialize. First, using indicators introduces a risk of condoning a low
level of human rights abuses. From a human rights perspective, every ad-
verse human rights impact is one too many; there is no need to count and
measure.147 What business and human rights indicators often do, in contrast,
is give the false impression that a “good” score (for instance, a 2 in a scale
from 1 to 5) equates to “good” behavior.148 For instance, the GoodCorpora-
tion displays the score of a company on its Framework on Human Rights
using traffic light colors. Few noncompliant grades guarantee a green-yellow
score. Yet, any score that is not “perfect” (i.e., zero abuses) is actually “bad,”
and should not receive a positive endorsement, as the green color implies
to the eyes of the user. Some companies might also pervert the meaning of
ratings. This might be the case of best-in-class approaches, such as the one
used by DJSI. Companies included in DJSI are the best in their sectors, but
this does not mean that they are perfect, or that abuses do not occur: “Better
than the others” does not necessarily mean “good.”
Second, in some circumstances, indicators represent less powerful
advocacy tools than narratives and anecdotes.149 Focusing on the number
dimension of human rights abuses can lead to losing sight of their suffering
dimension.150 For instance, a document reporting that a mining company is
144. Merry, Measuring the World, supra note 143, at S86; Rosga & Satterthwaie, supra note
27, at 284.
145. Human Rights Indicators, supra note 26, at iii.
146. Human rights indicators are part of a larger social trend toward the increasing impor-
tance of “numbers” and “audits.” See Theodore M. Porter, Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit
of Objectivity in Science and Public Life (1995); Michael Power, The Audit Society: Rituals of
Verification (1997).
147. Savage, supra note 106, at 4; Claude & Jabine, Exploring Human Rights Issues with
Statistics, supra note 79, at 21.
148. For a similar argument with respect to state-focused indicators, see Alston, supra note
108, at 254.
149. Spagnoli, supra note 23, at 8.
150. Landman, Measuring Human Rights, supra note 134, at 910; Samuel R. Lucas, The Road
to Hell . . .: The Statistics Proposal as the Final Solution to the Sovereign’s Human Rights
Question, 30 Wis. Int’l L. J. 259, 304 (2012).
complicit in the displacement of 856 individuals, or that a fashion brand is

associated with the death of 230 workers, will arguably not move people
more than a report with pictures and personal stories of victims of the abuses.
Following Meyer’s advice, “To quantify is necessarily to depersonalize and
even dehumanize a topic’s content. The supreme value of human rights
requires that one always keeps in mind the specific human costs in terms
of lives, pain, and suffering that violations of rights entail.”151
Third, using indicators introduces a risk of making the contestation
of misleading information more difficult. While scores and ratings are the
outcome of controversial normative and methodological decisions, as seen
above, they are often incorrectly presumed to be—or are presented as—sci-
entifically objective.152 When companies proudly announce their inclusion
in the FTSE4Good, the underlying subjective bases of the index are rarely
discussed. The consequence is that scores on business and human rights
indicators will be difficult to challenge because of their aura of objectivity.153
Contestation would require detailed (but not media-appealing) proof of the
inaccuracy of data input and/or of the methodology used.
A promising strategy to prevent and/or mitigate these challenges is
to meaningfully involve actual and potential human rights victims in the
production and use of indicators. For instance, the International Centre for
Human Rights and Democratic Development (Rights & Democracy) created a
community-based HRIA tool called “Getting it Right.” Its methodology gives
ownership to affected communities to assess and document the potential
human rights impacts that investment projects may generate. The vision for
the initiative is that, by managing the HRIA, communities and stakehold-
ers understand their rights and proactively engage in solving human rights
threats by working with NGOs, companies, and governments on a more
equal footing.154
VII. Conclusion
Indicators, ratings, and indices have become a distinctive feature of the global
governance landscape in business and human rights, and new initiatives
151. William H. Meyer, Human Rights and MNCs: Theory Versus Quantitative Analysis, 18
Hum. Rts. Q. 368, 380–81 (1996).
152. Tor Krever, Quantifying Law: Legal Indicator Projects and the Reproduction of Neoliberal
Common Sense, 34 Third World Q. 131 (2013).
153. Merry, Measuring the World, supra note 143, at S84. For a similar argument with respect
to the first attempts to measure state performance, see Lars Schoultz, U.S. Policy Toward
Human Rights in Latin America: A Comparative Analysis of Two Administrations, in
Global Human Rights, supra note 15, at 77, 84; Goldstein, supra note 79, at 38, 48.
154. See Gabrielle Watson, Irit Tamir & Brianna Kemp, Human Rights Impact Assessment in
Practice: Oxfam’s Application of a Community-based Approach, 31 Impact Assessment &
Project Appraisal 118 (2013).
continue to be launched. The Wikirate Project aims to develop and maintain

an open social networking system that allows Internet users to cooperatively
create and share knowledge on company behavior. The objective of Wiki-
rate is to be the “go-to” place for information on companies’ social and
environmental practices. Ultimately, the information will be accumulated
and appropriately visualized on the website to allow users to compare and
rate such companies. In October 2014, a geographically diverse group
of academics, free expression and privacy advocates, technologists, and
socially responsible investors—under the leadership of Rebecca MacKin-
non—published a draft methodology to assess, compare, and ultimately rank
the world’s major information and communications technology companies
on their policies and practices related to free expression and privacy.155
The project, called “Ranking Digital Rights,” aims to publish an inaugural
report covering Internet and telecommunications services companies by late
2015.156 In December 2014, a group of investors, an NGO, a think tank, and
an investor research agency, announced the launch of the first wide-scale
project to rank companies on their human rights performance. The project,
called the “Corporate Human Rights Benchmark,” will initially rank a total
of 500 of the top global companies from four key sectors: Agriculture, ICT,
Apparel, and Extractives.157 Also in December 2014, BankTrack launched a
report titled “Banking with Principles: Benchmarking Banks against the UN
Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.” The study assessed how
well banks are implementing the GPs into their own operations, policies, and
reporting. To do this, BankTrack benchmarked thirty-two large global banks
against a set of twelve criteria. These criteria fall into four categories: policy
commitment, due diligence commitment, reporting, and access to remedy.158
Against a backdrop of growing interest in business and human rights
indicators, this article mapped the most representative measurement initiatives
on the topic and explored a number of normative, methodological, practi-
cal, and political challenges to the production of valid and emancipatory
measures of corporate respect for human rights. In addition, it suggested
some considerations that may overcome potential skepticism:
• tracking progress over time is less problematic than comparing scores across
companies;
155. Ranking Digital Rights, Timeline (2014), available at https://rankingdigitalrights.org/project-

documents/work-plan/.
156. Ranking Digital Rights, Methodology Development (2015), available at https://rankingdigi-
talrights.org/methodology-development/.
157. Phil Bloomer, Human Rights and Big Business: New Ranking Aims to Drive Race to Top,
The Guardian, 14 Jan. 2015, available at http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-
professionals-network/2015/jan/14/human-rights-business-ranking.
158. Banking with Principles?: Benchmarking Banks against the UN Guiding Principles on
Business and Human Rights, BankTrack (2014), available at http://www.rightingfinance.
org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Read-full-report1.pdf.
• participatory and transparent processes can alleviate the problems associated

with controversial normative decisions and power shifts to unaccountable
bodies;
• sector- and country-specific indicators can diminish the irregularities deriv-

ing from omitted variables and information bias; and
• the strategy of accompanying scores with narrative explanations of the

company’s contexts of operation can help avoid the political risks linked
to an overreliance upon self-contained, seemingly objective, quantitative
expressions.159
Returning to standard-based measures and surveys, so far neglected by

the business and human rights community, might also represent a fruitful
strategy. Standard-based measures use expert judgment to transform qualita-
tive human rights information into a “score” on a “standardized scale that
typically is both ordinal and limited in range.”160 These types of measures
are widely used to compare states’ human rights practices. For instance, the
Political Terror Scale relies on two researchers to code countries on a scale
from 1 to 5 (the higher the number, the graver the violation) on the basis of
qualitative narratives found in the annual human rights reports published
by Amnesty International and the US State Department.161 The absence of
reliable data on corporate human rights abuses worldwide precludes the
creation of standard-based indicators of adverse human rights impacts. Yet, it
seems feasible to produce standard-based scales for the human rights policies
and processes of, at the very least, the largest multinational corporations.162
Experts might be called on to assign a score to the corporate policies on
the basis of the standards included in the GPs, such as reach within and
outside the company, the scope of human rights referred to, and level of
adoption. In the near future, this might also become viable with respect
to human rights processes. Experts may be called on to compare the due
diligence procedures disclosed under the US Reporting Requirements on
159. The importance of the complementarity between narrative and quantitative human rights
information is repeatedly acknowledged. See Goldstein, supra note 79, at 49; UNDP,
Using Indicators for Human Rights Accountability, supra note 107, at 90–92; Suesser
& Suarez de Miguel, supra note 98, at 166; Human Rights Indicators, supra note 26, at
26.
160. Landman & Carvalho, supra note 15, at 64.
161. Reed M. Wood & Mark Gibney, The Political Terror Scale (PTS): A Re-introduction and
a Comparison to CIRI, 32 Hum. Rts. Q. 367, 372 (2010). Similar projects are the Cin-
granelli and Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Data Project and Oona Hathaway’s scale of
torture. David L. Cingranelli & David L. Richards, The Cingranelli and Richards (CIRI)
Human Rights Data Project, 32 Hum. Rts. Q. 401 (2010); Hathaway, supra note 65, at
1979 n. 170.
162. Standard-based measures overcome most of the problems associated with reputational
scales and content analysis methodologies. See Abbott & Monsen, supra note 135, at
503; Turker, supra note 97, at 415.
Investment in Burma with the requirements included in the GPs and assign
them a score on a standardized scale from 1 to 10.
Surveys represent a promising tool as well. Innovative process indicators
could select a representative sample of stakeholders and present them with a
set of predefined questions on the company’s human rights processes, griev-
ance mechanisms, and/or adverse impacts.163 The questions can focus either
on perceptions of human rights (for example, “Do you deem the corporate
grievance mechanism to be sufficiently accessible?”), or on experiences of
human rights (for example, “Have you been displaced because of the com-
pany’s project?”).164 New technologies offer a great opportunity to diminish
the cost of running surveys and to elicit the views of potentially affected
stakeholders.165 Marks & Spencer (M&S), for instance, relies on a mobile
application that returns anonymous survey results as a mode for communi-
cating with workers in its clothing supply chain and for gathering feedback
on subjects such as working conditions, job satisfaction, and training.166
Similarly, Walmart uses real-time, anonymous worker feedback to ensure
safe factory working conditions throughout its Bangladesh supply chain.167
Survey methods have their own drawbacks, however. First, potential
victims of corporate human rights abuses can ignore their rights and cor-
porate best practices. This would inevitably invalidate their responses.168
Second, interviewees can exaggerate some claims because of their politi-
163. Numerous surveys have already been conducted on specific human rights issues. See
Lynn L. Amowitz et al., The Prevalence of War-Related Sexual Violence and Other Hu-
man Rights Abuses Among Internally Displaced Persons in Sierra Leone, 287 J. Am. Med.
Ass’n 513 (2002); Romesh Silva & Patrick Ball, Benetech The Profile of Human Rights Viola-
tions in Timor-Leste, 1974–1999 (2006); Suesser & Suarez de Miguel, supra note 98, at
159; L. Stark et al., Measuring Violence Against Women Amidst War and Displacement
in Northern Uganda Using the “Neighbourhood Method,” 64 J. Epidemiol. Community
Health 1056 (2010); Alina Potts, Kathleen Myer & Les Roberts, Measuring Human Rights
Violations in a Conflict-Affected Country: Results From a Nationwide Cluster Survey in
Central African Republic, 5 Conflict & Health 4 (2011).
164. Landman & Carvalho, supra note 15, at 91.
165. As far as employees are concerned, see Michael Silverman, Elmira Bakhshalian & Laura
Hillman, Social Media and Employee Voice: The Current Landscape, Chartered Inst. of
Personnel and Development 11–12 (2013), available at http://opinion.berkeley.edu/pubs/
srcipd.pdf .
166. Services: Labor Link, GoodWorldSolutions.org (2013), available at http://goodworldsolu-
tions.org/services//.
167. LaborVoices will Direct a Factory Safety Project for Walmart in Bangladesh, Labor-
Voices (16 May 2013), available at https://s3.amazonaws.com/lv-press-releases/
Walmart+Announcement+-+Press+Release+-+May+16+2013.pdf. Better Work, a part-
nership between the International Labour Organization and the International Finance
Corporation, also uses mobile technologies to reach employees in supply chains. See
Mobile App Brings Cambodian Labour Law to Users’ Fingertips, Better Work (3 Oct.
2013), available at http://betterwork.org/global/?p=3650.
168. See Christopher J. Anderson et al., In the Eye of the Beholder?: The Foundations of
Subjective Human Rights Conditions in East-Central Europe, 38 Comp. Pol. Stud. 771
(2005).
cal objectives or minimize some problems out of fear of repercussions.169

Third, difficulties with sampling frame and sampling strategy are common:
Developing countries may have no census, and it might be difficult to reach
disadvantaged population.170 Yet, a strong argument in favor of surveys is
validity: Surveys elicit the views of the ultimate beneficiaries of improved
human rights norms. According to the GPs: “To enable business enterprises
to assess their human rights impacts accurately, [companies] should seek to
understand the concerns of potentially affected stakeholders by consulting
them directly...”171 This could also be used against those corporations that
dismiss external expert assessments of governance as uninformed pontifica-
tion by outsiders.172
The conclusion of this article is that, while business and human rights
indicators have great potential, we should proceed with care. Most existing
initiatives lack the legitimacy to make potentially controversial normative
decisions and can disempower vulnerable stakeholders. In addition, meth-
odological and practical problems seriously affect the validity of their scores.
Yet, this should not discourage attempts to overcome these challenges. The
production of indicators triggers two fundamental processes in the nascent
business and human rights field: clarification of norms and collection of
information. First, while the scope of states’ duties to protect human rights is
relatively well defined today, the exact requirements and limits of corporate
responsibility regarding human rights are still unclear in many circumstances.
The creation of indicators requires answering difficult questions on how to
move from general principles to operational policies, how to balance balance
difficult trade-offs between different responsibilities, and how to set corporate
priorities.173 Second, the business and human rights community is often stuck
with a “chicken and egg” question: In a bad political atmosphere, it cannot
obtain good data, but good data is needed to improve the atmosphere itself.
The creation of indicators requires the disclosure of information that would
not be produced or released otherwise.
The final call is for more research on the validity and the emancipatory
potential of specific measurement initiatives.174 The business and human
169. Landman, Measuring Human Rights, supra note 134, at 919 n. 42.
170. Kaufmann & Kraay, supra note 77, at 16; Landman & Carvalho, supra note 15, at 101.
18.
172. For innovative approach to the creation of “participatory numbers,” see Robert Cham-
bers, Who Counts? The Quiet Revolution of Participation and Numbers 22 (Inst. for Dev.
Studies, Working Paper No. 296, 2007).
173. For a similar view, see Aron Cramer & Giusy Chiovato Rambaldo, Measuring and
Reporting Corporate Performance on Human Rights, CSR Europe & Business for Social
Responsibility 8 (2001).
174. See, e.g., Mark Sharfman, The Construct Validity of the Kinder, Lydenberg & Domini
Social Performance Ratings Data, 15 J. Bus. Ethics 287, 289 (1996); Fowler & Hope,
supra note 36.
rights community risks falling victim to the erroneous “article of faith” that
some data are better than no data.175 Yet, indicators are only tools, not ends
in themselves. They can be seen “as a crutch, indispensable, but still a crutch
. . . if it is not proportioned to the needs of the user, it can hinder as well
as help.”176 The question is therefore not whether to produce business and
human rights indicators—as recognized more than twenty-five years ago
by Richard Claude and Thomas Jabine, “[I]t now seems clear that although
measurement might not represent the central feature, it must play a role in
studying, assessing, and planning for human rights”177—but how to do that
while conforming with the objective of giving power to the powerless.
175. Scoble & Wiseberg, supra note 82, at 148. See also Alston, supra note 108, at 251.
176. William H. Shaw, Paradoxes, Problems and Progress, 68 J. Am. Stat. Ass’n 7, 7 (1973).
177. Richard P. Claude & Thomas B. Jabine, Editors’ Introduction to Symposium on Statistical
Issues in the Field of Human Rights, 8 Hum. Rts. Q. 551, 553 (1986).
2015 Contributors 575
Contributors
Elizabeth S. Barnert, M.D., M.P.H., M.S. is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clini-
cal Scholar and a Clinical Instructor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University
of California, Los Angeles.
Paul J. Chung, M.D., M.S. is Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Public Health
and Chief of General Pediatrics at the University of California, Los Angeles, and is
a senior natural scientist at the RAND Corporation.
Damiano de Felice holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the London School
of Economics and Political Science. He is the Strategic Adviser to the CEO of the
Access to Medicine Foundation, the co-director of the Measuring Business and Hu-
man Rights project, a Board Member of the European Society of International Law’s
Interest Group in Business and Human Rights, and a member of the World Economic
Forum Global Agenda Council on Human Rights. His research interests include: aid,
development, global governance, human rights, and corporate social responsibility.
Specifically with respect to business and human rights issues, he concentrates on
how to measure corporate respect for human rights and how to integrate human
rights considerations into the activities of pharmaceutical companies and financial
institutions. E-mail: [email protected].
Julie Fraser has a B.A. and LL.B. (hons.) from the University of Melbourne, Australia
and an LL.M. (cum laude) from Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She is currently
a Ph.D. Candidate at the Netherlands School of Human Rights Research, where her
research focuses on the implementation of international human rights obligations in
local settings through the use of non-legal measures such social institutions.
Michael Freeman is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Government, Uni-

versity of Essex, United Kingdom. He is a former Chairperson of the Human Rights
Research Committee of the International Political Science Association and also of
the British Section of Amnesty International. He is a former Deputy Director of the
Human Rights Centre, University of Essex, and is a member of the Board of Over-
seers, Human Rights Institute, University of Connecticut. He has lectured on human
rights in more than twenty countries, from Japan and China to Mexico and Brazil,
and from Sweden and Norway to South Africa. His current research interests are in
the philosophy of human rights, world poverty, and cultural relativism.
Emma Gilligan is the Director of the Human Rights Institute and Associate Professor
of History at the University of Connecticut. After completing her doctoral studies
in Russian history at the University of Melbourne, Australia, Emma Gilligan was a
postdoctoral fellow in the Department of History at the University of Chicago from
2003-2006. During this time, she completed her book Defending Human Rights in
Russia; Sergei Kovalyov Dissident and Human Rights Commissioner, 1969-96 (Rout-
Human Rights Quarterly 37 (2015) 575–577 © 2015 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
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HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY

Business and Human Rights Indicators

Shift and Mazars), sustainability indices (for example, FTSE4Good), working

• governments willing to adopt evidence-based protective measures;

• researchers who are interested in exploring the drivers of responsible cor-

Notwithstanding these promises, measuring human rights is not an easy

reader to a representative sample of measurement initiatives in the business

II. Business and Human Rights Indicators

The traditional way to assess the human rights performance of a company

whether—on 27 September 2009—Hudbay Minerals “negligently authorized

Table 1. Examples of business and human rights indicators

Indicator Potential results

III. Business and Human Rights Measurement Initiatives

According to AnnJanette Rosga and Margaret Satterthwaie, “[I]t is fair to say

link the conceptual discussion about human rights to actual implementa-

Name Producer Time Focus Brief description

policies, procedures, and

the Danish Investment

Name Producer Time Focus Brief description

Guiding Principles on Business

Name Producer Time Focus Brief description

Base Code and Principles of

companies understand and

5. Human Rights Impact Assessment tools

Human Rights Impact NomoGaia 2012 Human rights A four-phase process of

human rights conditions and

Name Producer Time Focus Brief description

the best and worst products in

C. ESG Data Providers and Sustainability Indices

Financial institutions and investors are expected to meet their responsibil-

questionnaire used for the CSA is industry-specific and contains approxi-

41. RobecoSAM, Measuring Intangibles: RobecoSAM’s Corporate Sustainability Assessment Meth-

E. Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) Tools

As responsible citizens can influence corporate behavior through their con-

IV. The Normative Framework: The United Nations Guiding

In a recently published guide on how to produce state-focused human rights

A. Three Lessons from the GPs

66. GoodCorporation, The GoodCorporation Framework on Human Rights 2 (2012), avail-

Process indicators can assess inputs—that is, the financial, human,

72. Human Rights Indicators, supra note 26, at 37.

all different aspects of the corporate responsibility to respect human rights.77

Human rights scholars agree that conceptual clarity is a fundamental prereq-

81. Rosga & Satterthwaie, supra note 27, at 295.

good practice to screen suppliers, but the most important consideration is a

legitimate answers as a result of transparent and participatory processes. In

Ruggie, Comments on Human Rights Obligations of Business: Beyond the Corporate

aiming to develop public reporting and assurance frameworks based on the

V. Challenges to the Validity of Business and Human

Indicators can be appraised on the basis of different criteria, such as policy-

As with any simplification and standardization process the production of

of violations involving rights of indigenous peoples.”105 This indicator risks

105. G4 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines, supra note 33, at 73.

or country-specific indicators. Companies operating in the same sectors and/

2. Variance Truncation and False Precision

Any good measurement relies on good information. Unfortunately, business

112. I thank Patrick Ball for useful comments on these examples.

in Sweden;124 state-owned enterprises, listed companies, and non-listed

do not possess sufficient human rights expertise to verify the truthfulness of

2.. Third-party Documentation