What investors need to assess human rights and environmental due diligence

The tools featured on this website are designed with investors and for investors to equip them to evaluate the quality of portfolio companies' human rights and environmental due diligence (HREDD), an essential measure of a company's risk exposure. Each tool addresses a pain point - and a point of leverage - in human rights and environmental due diligence. Individually and together, the tools are designed to help investors to discern the quality of HREDD and to improve corporate engagement.  

How can the toolset help investors meet their obligations under the EU CSDDD and CSRD?  Click here

The Tools 

Red Flags in Sustainability Initiatives

Investors need impartial guidance on how to evaluate the strength of a given social certification in reducing labor and environmental risks in supply chains. While certifications can be useful signals that a company has put systems in place to measure and manage human rights and environmental risks, they are not always reliable proxies for responsible business conduct. Red Flags in Sustainability Initiatives highlights the warning signs that a certification or multi-stakeholder initiative (MSI) membership may not be a reliable indicator of corporate performance, and points to good qualities that investors can look for.

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Responsible Contracting

International supply chain contracts play a significant role in determining human rights and environmental outcomes in supply chains. The Responsible Contracting Guide informs investors on how responsible contracting can support more robust HREDD processes that can effectively prevent adverse human rights and environmental impacts. It supports investor engagement with their portfolio companies to ensure that they are designing their supply contracts to support, not undermine, HREDD processes.

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Stakeholder Engagement Guide (beta)

Stakeholder engagement sits at the heart of quality human rights due diligence, but doing it well is complex. Investors don’t always know what to look for to ensure a company is meaningfully undertaking engagement with rights holders, what to press for in their corporate engagement to improve it, or how to ensure that the company is integrating what they have learned through their engagement into their full due diligence process. The Stakeholder Engagement Guide provides tailored guidance on stakeholder engagement that leverages existing stakeholder engagement standards.

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Upcoming Tools

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Remedy Guide

Access to a remedy is itself a fundamental right in international human rights law, and a core component of HREDD. It’s also an area that most stymies the private sector. The Remedy Guide will provide much needed translation of remedy that includes and goes beyond company-level grievance mechanisms, demonstrates the financial materiality of the failure to provide remedy, and includes explainers of all forms of remedy expected of companies that cause or contribute to harms. ​