GRI and Global Child Forum Commit to Driving Corporate Action to Improve Children’s Lives

Last week, GRI and the Global Child Forum announced to join forces to strengthen corporate transparency and accountability on children’s rights issues. The two organizations announced their collaboration through a Letter of Intent at the Royal Palace in Stockholm, at the 10th Global Child Forum.

The new collaboration will combine the best of the two organizations and drive corporate action to improve the lives of children. The Global Child Forum is an independent multi-stakeholder platform for informed dialogue on how the UN Children’s Rights Convention and other key instruments can be fulfilled, respected and promoted by every actor in society. Global Child Forum is a knowledge and high-level engagement hub, and uses a transparency and accountability approach, with a key role for sustainability reporting within its research and tools. These include the knowledge center, benchmark research and reports, and the Children's Rights and Business Atlas, an online corporate due diligence tool developed in partnership with UNICEF.

GRI provides the global standards for sustainability reporting, which includes the important dimension of children’s rights. GRI’s reporting framework is the world’s most widely used: thousands of companies – large and small – across 37 sectors in more than one hundred countries use GRI’s standards to disclose their impacts on the environment and society. Operating on a multi-stakeholder basis, GRI has a core supporter group of over 500 members with a combined market capitalization of 4.90 trillion, and has 100 certified training partners across the world. 

Says Teresa Fogelberg, GRI Deputy Chief Executive: “There is a need to align guidance for sustainability performance, practice and reporting around the world. This alignment means a major push for businesses across the world to not only be aware of their impact on the lives of children, but to measure, manage and improve their contribution in a globally comparable and standardized manner. Our cooperation drives transparency, which is a great force of change and ultimately a transformation in how the world treats children.”

Ulrika Nilsson, Managing Director of the Global Child Forum adds: “Advancing children’s rights in the corporate sector is our major focus. Delivering quality research, robust tools and case studies to support businesses which, in turn, help children to develop and thrive, is at our core. We are very proud to launch this strategic cooperation with Global Reporting Initiative which will help us to further deliver on these objectives through joint research projects and global engagements with stakeholders.”

In addition to the ongoing practical cooperation, the partnership highlights joint passion and vision of a thriving global community that respects and advances children’s rights.  In this vision, a special focus is cast on improving the rights and lives of children by catalyzing business actions and transparency.

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