International guidelines and principles

International organisations, especially the UN and the OECD, have been active in giving guidelines and principles for responsible business conduct and corporate sustainability already for decades. Corporate sustainability gained wider attention after the introduction of the United Nations Global Compact in 2000. The Compact is a voluntary initiative aiming to help companies conduct responsible business practices.

• The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (The UNGPs) from 2011 are a set of global principles to prevent and address human rights risks arising from business activities. They are structured around three mutually reinforcing pillars: the state duty to protect human rights, the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, and access to remedy for victims of business-related harm. The second pillar, companies’ responsibility to respect, is the central operational element for businesses. This responsibility applies independently of states’ ability or willingness to fulfill their own human rights obligations. It therefore establishes a global standard of expected conduct for companies of all forms and sizes, regardless of where they operate. The third pillar complements this by ensuring that when harms occur, affected individuals have access to effective remedy. According to the UNGPs, companies should embed the responsibility to respect human rights into governance by identifying and addressing risks and impacts on people. This provides the company with a credible process for making responsible choices under uncertainty.
• UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in 2015 by all UN member states, cover interconnected issues in the areas of social, economic, and environmental sustainability. The SDGs are among the important international sustainability guidelines and principles for responsible business conduct and they are actively relied upon by companies in their sustainability work.
• The OECD introduced Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct (The OECD Guidelines) already in 1976. They have been reviewed many times since, the latest version of the Guidelines being from 2023. Unlike the UNGPs that focus solely on human rights, the OECD Guidelines cover all key areas of business responsibility, including human rights, environment, bribery, consumer interests, disclosure, science and technology, competition, and taxation. The OECD Guidelines are supported by National Contact Points for Responsible Business Conduct (NCPs), established by governments to help make the guidelines more effective.

Both the UNGPs and the OECD Guidelines introduce a risk-based due diligence process through which companies can identify, prevent, mitigate, and account for how they address their actual and potential adverse sustainability impacts. Next, you’ll learn more about the sustainability due diligence process (sometimes also called Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence (HREDD)).