Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) are an extremely important facet of the global economy. This Good Practice Note seeks to provide guidance to corporate leaders and M&A practitioners at all levels across the corporate, finance, private equity and legal sectors on how the due diligence process within M&A is being utilized and can be utilized to enable companies to more effectively carry out their responsibility to respect human rights as contemplated by the UN Framework and Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights.

In recent years, companies have ramped up their efforts in the area of sustainable supply chain management. This Good Practice Note is focused on what businesses can do to better support workers in their supply chain, including through supporting workers’ assertion of their human rights. This Note explores some of the good practices, advantages and pitfalls related to working with suppliers and other stakeholders, especially trade unions, to support workers in the supply chain, including in assertion of their human rights.

Community engagement has arisen as a mutually beneficial way to advance human rights in supply chains. In community engagement, companies familiarize themselves and develop relationships with the stakeholders of the communities in which they operate in order to minimize any negative externalities and offer aid and other initiatives that will benefit community members. This Good Practice Note aims to explain some of the critical advantages, pitfalls and good practices related to engaging with and investing in suppliers’ communities.

Lawyers are increasingly expected to raise ethical and moral—as well as legal— considerations faced by their client transnational corporations as a matter of professional responsibility. In turn, they often serve a “moral leadership” role. Leadership involves perceiving challenges and opportunities just over the horizon. This Good Practice Note aims: (1) to illustrate how transnational corporations' in- house corporate counsel are perfectly situated to propel their corporations to adopt practices that ensure respect for human rights; and (2) to encourage this positive role by concisely highlighting key lessons learned and good practices.

Stakeholder dialogue is an important mechanism for companies to assess and improve their human rights impacts in local communities. This Good Practice Note focuses on panels which provide advice and external perspectives on the businesses’ corporate social responsibility strategy including its human rights impact on local communities. It aims to identify advantages and pitfalls, and some basic good practices for companies when engaging such a panel.

Businesses are increasingly being called upon to raise human rights concerns with the governments of countries in which they operate, most often by local or international civil society organisations. Businesses leaders may wonder whether and how they might address such human rights concerns, as an increasing number of companies accept the business case for integrating human rights into their core operations and into their engagement with stakeholders, including with governments. This Good Practice Note aims to bring greater clarity to this sensitive topic and provides an initial orientation to an under-explored, but increasingly pressing topic in responsible business practice.

The responsibility to comply with all applicable local, national, regional and international laws is a central tenet of the corporate responsibility to respect human rights. Yet sometimes local or national laws pose requirements that conflict with internationally recognized human rights, thereby making it difficult or impossible for business enterprises to meet their responsibility to respect human rights. The goal of this Good Practice Note is to provide business enterprises with a non-exhaustive set of good practices for addressing situations in which local or national laws appear to conflict with internationally recognized human rights.

There are many barriers preventing the world’s poorest and most disadvantaged from achieving their rights to adequate healthcare. Under the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights many of these fall under governments’ duty to protect. This Good Practice Note illustrates a number of different ways in which responsible businesses can support the UN goals in this area.

Corporations increasingly are embracing the dual challenges of maximizing profits while also promoting the protection of human rights. The latter is at the core of corporate social responsibility and it holds the promise of being good for business. Corporate strategic philanthropy plays a central role in this dual mission of profitability and responsibility. This Good Practice Note provides the context for and offers recommendations relating to each of these elements while demonstrating how corporations are using the shift from traditional philanthropy to strategic philanthropy in the most valuable and measurable way.

An overview of the resource "A Guide to Traceability: A Practical Approach to Advance Sustainability in Global Supply Chains” is presented. Then webinar then explores the objectives and challenges of implementing traceability in the supply chains of key commodities in the food sector, (such as sugar, coffee, cocoa, as well as meat and fish) and feature a panel of commodity-specific or traceability scheme experts.

Identifies leading corporate practices in key sustainability areas – and the wide spectrum of ideas presented at the Forum on innovations, collaborations and public policy recommendations. The report showcases approximately 200 commitments to action announced by corporate leaders, over 50 new tools and resources, and media coverage of the Forum.

The Business Leadership Criteria on Carbon Pricing is designed to inspire companies to reach the next level of climate performance and to advocate for a price on carbon as a necessary and effective measure to tackle the climate change challenge. The criteria comprise three overlapping dimensions: first, setting an internal carbon price; second, responsible policy advocacy; and third, communicating on progress.