Brief | How the UN can inspire companies to act to achieve sustainable development goals

Since the SDGs were adopted in 2015, corporate action to meet these goals has been voluntary, with few consequences for those who have done little or nothing. While the UN does not have the power to control companies and dictate their contribution to the SDGs, it can clearly articulate companies’ specific responsibilities. This is a proven way to drive change and, where necessary, create the right environment for enforcement. This is exactly what has happened with human rights.

Human rights were put on the international agenda in 1948 when the UN promulgated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But it was not until 2011 that companies really began to take action on human rights issues, when the UN published its Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which outline companies’ responsibilities towards workers in their factories and supply chains.

Spurred by public desire to protect human rights and engage investors, corporate actions showed regulators what was possible and prompted them to act. This led to the introduction of the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which requires large companies to carry out environmental and human rights due diligence in their operations, subsidiaries and value chains.

At the World Benchmarking Alliance, we measure companies’ progress towards achieving the SDGs. Our new Social Benchmark measures how some of the world’s most powerful companies perform on key human rights issues, such as paying their workers a living wage and conducting adequate due diligence. We found that companies based in countries with human rights regulations perform, on average, almost 60 percent better than those in countries without such regulations. At the same time, companies in high-impact sectors like construction, which have been committed to human rights by various stakeholders, perform over 80 percent better than companies in other sectors.

Now the United Nations must clearly outline corporate responsibilities in all other areas related to sustainable development – ​​including climate, biodiversity, digital rights and inequality. Without this clarity and certainty, corporate behaviour cannot and will not change.

Gerbrand Haverkamp, ​​Managing Director, World Benchmarking Alliance

Hats off to China’s women for their quiet perseverance

As I read about how China’s women were unfairly treated by the adverse winds of cultural discrimination, I was struck by a shudder at my family history.

The boy I was in the early 1970s recoiled from the cold touch of my Fujian grandmother’s marble hand, placed in a freezing mortuary to slow physical deterioration in the Bornean heat.

My grandmother was born as an eight-year-old domestic servant with bound feet into the household of a wealthy businessman. She came from an impoverished family that depended on her income. The trust between the families was sealed by her engagement to the businessman’s son.

Grandma grew up to be a marriageable woman as a servant to the family of the boy she was forced to marry. Having never learned to read or write, she memorized Bible passages that were read to her as a girl. Her message that living a life that deviates from the Scriptures ruins one’s future prospects went unheard by the bored little boy I was.

Now, as I face my own midlife challenges, I draw strength from my grandmother’s experience of living out the fate that life has dealt her. The message: stay calm and carry on despite the unlucky cards you are dealt in life’s gamble.

Hats off to China’s women who choose to cope as best they can despite the bans and restrictions of then – and even now.

Joseph Ting, Brisbane