United Nations Global Compact

Not to be confused with Global Compact for Migration.

UN Global Compact
Formation26 July 2000
TypeFramework and Mechanism
Legal statusActive
Head
Sanda Ojiambo, CEO & Executive Director[1][2]
Websiteunglobalcompact.org

The United Nations Global Compact is a non-binding United Nations pact to get businesses and firms worldwide to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies, and to report on their implementation.[3] The UN Global Compact is the world's largest corporate sustainability and corporate social responsibility initiative, with more than 20,000 corporate participants and other stakeholders in over 167 countries.[4] The organization consists of a global agency, and local "networks" or agencies for each participating country. Under the Global Compact, companies are brought together with UN agencies, labour groups and civil society.

The UN Global Compact is a principle-based framework for businesses, stating ten principles in the areas of human rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption. The declared objectives of the participants and stakeholders are to "mainstream the ten principles in business activities around the world" and to "catalyse actions in support of broader UN goals, such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)".[5][6] The organization solicits commitments to specific sustainability and social responsibility goals from CEOs and highest-level executives, and in turn offers training, peer-networks and a functional framework for responsibility,[7] taking a "learning model" for corporate change, rather than a regulatory one.[8]

The UN Global Compact was announced by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in an address to the World Economic Forum on 31 January 1999[9][10][11] and was officially launched at UN Headquarters in New York City on 26 July 2000. The Global Compact Office works on the basis of a mandate set out by the UN General Assembly as an organization that "promotes responsible business practices and UN values among the global business community and the UN System".[12] The UN Global Compact is a founding member of the United Nations Sustainable Stock Exchanges (SSE) initiative along with the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP-FI), and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

  1. ^ "Assistant Secretary-General and CEO of the United Nations Global Compact | UN Global Compact". unglobalcompact.org. Retrieved 17 July 2023.
  2. ^ Anita Chepkoech (22 April 2022). "Kenyan Sanda Ojiambo gets top job at UN Global Compact". The EastAfrican. Nairobi, Kenya. Retrieved 23 April 2022.
  3. ^ "Business Application | UN Global Compact". unglobalcompact.org. Retrieved 19 February 2023.
  4. ^ "Business Application | UN Global Compact".
  5. ^ "About the UN Global Compact". UN Global Compact.
  6. ^ Coco, Kristen (8 December 2014). "Major Companies to Help Set the Stage for Ambitious Climate Agreement in 2015". UN Global Compact.
  7. ^ Fussler, Claude; Cramer, Aron; Vegt, Sebastian van der (8 September 2017). Raising the Bar: Creating Value with the UN Global Compact. Routledge. pp. 53–63. ISBN 978-1-351-28090-7.
  8. ^ Ruggie, John Gerard (2001). "Global_governance.net: the global compact as learning network". Global Governance. 7 (4): 371–378. doi:10.1163/19426720-00704003. ISSN 1075-2846. JSTOR 27800311.
  9. ^ Kell, Georg (2005). "The Global Compact Selected Experiences and Reflections". Journal of Business Ethics. 59 (1/2): 69–79. doi:10.1007/s10551-005-3413-0. ISSN 0167-4544. JSTOR 25123541. S2CID 154572146.
  10. ^ Williams, Oliver F. (2022). "The United Nations Global Compact: What Did It Promise?". Leadership and Business Ethics. Issues in Business Ethics. Vol. 60. Springer Netherlands. pp. 327–343. doi:10.1007/978-94-024-2111-8_20. ISBN 978-94-024-2110-1.
  11. ^ "Secretary-General proposes global compact on human rights, labour, environment, in address to World Economic Forum in Davos - Meetings Coverage and Press Releases". United Nations. 1 February 1999.
  12. ^ McWilliams, Abagail; Rupp, Deborah E.; Siegel, Donald S.; Stahl, Günter; Waldman, David A. (24 October 2019). The Oxford Handbook of Corporate Social Responsibility: Psychological and Organizational Perspectives. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-880228-0.