UN Global Compact
UN Global Compact was launched in 1999 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, by Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary-General. Business leaders were invited to join an international initiative to encourage companies worldwide to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies. The Global Compact is a voluntary network where companies are brought together with UN agencies, labour groups and civil society.
The UN Global Compact's ten principles
The UN Global Compact challenges business to operate according to ten principles covering human rights, labour, the environment and corruption and bribery. They are derived from:
- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- The International Labour Organization's Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work
- The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, A/CONF.151/26 (Vol. I)
- The United Nations Convention Against Corruption
Human Rights
Businesses should:
1. Support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights; and
2. Make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses.
Labour Standards
Businesses should uphold:
3. the freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining;
4. the elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labour;
5. the effective abolition of child labour; and
6. the elimination of discrimination in employment and occupation.
Environment
Businesses should:
7. support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges;
8. undertake initiatives to promote environmental responsibility; and
9. encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies.
Anti-Corruption
10. Businesses should work against corruption in all its forms, including extortion and bribery.
More on UN and Global contact
- UN Global Compact. Information about guidelines and principles, networks and participants, programs and events, as well as reports. Some topics:
- Communication on Progress-reports (COPs), submitted by the UN Global Compact participants.
- Participant Search provides a list of all participants and stakeholders. A company’s Communication on Progress (COP) report can also be accessed through the Participant Search browser.
- Business and human rights
Key UN documents
- UN Charter in Swedish | in English
- UN System Chart
- Yearbook of the United Nations
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Swedish | in English
- Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action
- Statue of the International Court of Justice
Human rights, conventions and declarations
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Swedish | in English
- Resolution 217 A (III) / A/RES/217(III) adopted by the UN General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 during its 183rd plenary meeting
- The Core International Human Rights Instruments and their monitoring bodies
- Universal Human Rights Index - UHRI. Human rights recommendations from all parts of the UN system: the UN Treaty Monitoring Bodies, the Human Rights Council mechanisms Universal Periodic Review and Special Procedures. Each document links to other related information in the database
- Charter-based Body Database. Documents and reports of the Human Rights Council, its predecessor and their subsidiaries and parent organs. Maintained by OHCHR (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights).
- Treaty Body Database. Full text documents from the UN human rights treaty monitoring bodies
- Yearbook on Human Rights 1946-1988
- OHCHR website for background information, documents and reports.
- Research guides by the UN library Dag Hammarskjöld Library:
UN documents and publications in catalogues and databases
- United Nations Digital Library. UN official documents and open access publications, UN maps, UN voting data and speeches.
- UN iLibrary. UN publications online covering different topics.
- ODS (Official Document System) is an full-text database of UN documents published since 1993, including digitized documents published between 1946 and 1993.
- Daily list of documents. Documents published for the day, with full text links, can be found in the United Nations full text database ODS.
- UNBIS Thesaurus is a multilingual database of the controlled vocabulary used to describe UN documents.
- Index to proceedings is an annual bibliographic guide to the proceedings and documentation of the major UN organs. The index includes:
- a list of all documents
- a comprehensive subject index
- an index to speeches
- a voting chart of resolutions
- United Nations Documents Index (in United Nations Digital Library). References to all documents by subject area are published. A collection of indexes is held by the Dag Hammarskjöld and Law Library, Uppsala, Sweden and the UN Library in New York and the UN library in Geneva.