Global Compact
The United Nations Global Compact is an initiative to encourage businesses worldwide to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies, and to report on them. Under the Global Compact, companies are brought together with UN agencies, labour groups and civil society. It is a framework for businesses that are committed to aligning their operations and strategies with ten universally accepted principles in the areas ofhuman rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption .
The Global Compact was first announced by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on January 31, 1999, and was officially launched at UN Headquarters in New York on July 26, 2000. Since then, the initiative has grown to more than 6200 participants, including over 4700 businesses in 120 countries around the world. -
GRI
The Global Reporting Initiative produces the world's de facto standard in reporting guidelines for sustainable management. Sustainability reporting is the action whereby an organization publicly communicates its economic, environmental, and social performance. The GRI's mission is to make sustainability reporting by all organizations as routine and comparable as financial reporting. The GRI Guidelines are the most common framework used in the world for reporting. The GRI refers to the 30,000 strong multi-stakeholder network that collaborates to advance sustainability reporting. To date, more than 1,500 companies, including many of the worlds leading brands, have declared their voluntary adoption of the Guidelines worldwide. All sorts of organizations report using the GRI Guidelines, such as corporate businesses, public agencies, smaller enterprises, NGOs, industry groups and others.
AA1000 Assurance Standard
The AA1000 Assurance Standard, launched in 2003, aims to provide a systematic and consistent framework for assurance of performance and has been categorized as the first non-proprietary, open-source Assurance Standard that covers the full range of an organisation's disclosure and performance. The standard assesses reports against three main principles: materiality, completeness and responsiveness. Sustainability Reporting and Assurance Standards, like AA1000AS, are responding to increasing stakeholder demands for credible, fair and balanced information on organisations' management and understanding of non-financial issues. -
Fair Trade
Fair Trade is an organized social movement offering a market-based approach to alleviating global poverty and promoting sustainability. The movement advocates the payment of a fair price as well as the introduction of social and environmental standards among groups producing a wide variety of goods. It focuses, in particular, on exports from developing countries to developed countries of, most notably, handicrafts, coffee, cocoa, sugar, tea, bananas, honey, cotton, wine, fresh fruit, and flowers.
Fair Trade's strategic intent is to deliberately work with marginalized producers and workers in order to help them move from a position of vulnerability to secure and economic self-sufficiency. It also aims at empowering them to become stakeholders in their own organizations and to actively play a wider role in the global arena to achieve greater equity in international trade.
