De-contextualized Corporate Human Rights Benchmarks: Whose Perspective Counts? See Disclaimer

In this piece I examine the recent trend of corporate benchmarks in the business and human rights (BHR) field. The most well-known benchmarking initiative is the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB), which I discuss along with the Responsible Mining Index (RMI). I argue that these initiatives, managerialistic in nature, fall short of including the voices of those whose rights are impacted by the corporations that they rank highly. In short, the benchmarks appear to be de-contextualized and ahistorical. Therefore, caution should be exercised when considering these benchmarks, because ranking certain corporations implies human rights performance despite disclaimers that mention their reliance on self-reported corporate data on human rights and, to a much lesser extent, information from select secondary sources, namely the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC). In short, I argue that the benchmarks are misleading in terms of human rights and corporate responsibility when considered from a rights holder perspective. To illustrate the shortcomings of these benchmarks, I use empirical secondary data from socio-environmental conflicts in which some extractives companies with high rankings on these benchmarks allegedly harm human rights. I also discuss the implications in relation to the growing interest in socially responsible or environmental social and governance (ESG) investing.1 I recommend that these benchmarks should be re-named to reflect more accurately their content and what they actually measure: corporate-reported human rights ‘inputs’.This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 70748