What are the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights?

The UNGPs, endorsed by the UN in 2011, set out a corporate responsibility to respect human rights through ongoing due diligence: a policy commitment, identifying and addressing impacts, tracking effectiveness, and providing remedy. This checker is structured around those expectations and the OECD Due Diligence Guidance.

What are salient human rights risks?

Salient risks are the human rights at greatest risk of severe negative impact through a company's activities or business relationships. Identifying them, rather than treating all risks equally, is a core UNGP step so that the most severe and likely harms are prioritised for action.

Does a high score mean I am compliant with the CSDDD?

No. The EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive imposes specific legal obligations that go beyond this self-assessment. A high score indicates strong process maturity and a good foundation, but legal compliance requires reviewing the directive's text with qualified advisers.

Why does remedy matter so much in the scoring?

Under UNGP 22 and 29 to 31, a credible operational grievance mechanism and the provision of remedy where harm is caused or contributed to are essential, not optional. Companies that identify risks but cannot remediate harm fall short of the responsibility to respect rights.

How often should I repeat this assessment?

Human rights due diligence is ongoing, not a one-off. Repeat the assessment at least annually and whenever you enter new markets, onboard significant suppliers, or your salient risk profile changes, so the process keeps pace with your evolving value chain.

Human Rights Due Diligence Checker (UNGPs)

The UN Guiding Principles ask companies to know and show that they respect human rights through continuous due diligence, not a single audit. This checker turns that expectation into 30 concrete indicators across five pillars so procurement and ESG teams can benchmark where their process is strong and where it is exposed.

How it works

The 30 indicators map to the five elements of human rights due diligence drawn from the UNGPs and OECD Due Diligence Guidance: policy commitment, salient risk identification, integration and supplier action, tracking and verification, and grievance and remedy. Each answer is scored:

Yes = 2, Partial = 1, No = 0
maturity % = total score / (30 × 2) × 100

Bands map the percentage to a tier from Initial, where salient-risk exposure is high, up to Mature, where the process is robust and UNGP-aligned. Per-pillar scores reveal whether the gap is in identifying risks or in actually remediating harm.

Example and notes

A company with a strong public policy and supplier code but no operational grievance mechanism will score well on the first three pillars and poorly on remedy, which the pillar breakdown exposes immediately. That pattern is common and risky: identifying impacts without a route to remedy fails the UNGP test. Treat the result as an internal benchmarking aid that points to the next investment, not as assurance or legal advice on the EU CSDDD, which carries its own statutory obligations.