New Analysis: What Benchmarking Tells Us About Human Rights and Competitiveness
A newly released UNDP report, Human Rights vs. Competitiveness – A False Dilemma? challenges the assumption that stronger corporate human rights performance comes at a cost to companies and undermines financial performance. After analyzing World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) Corporate Human Rights Benchmark criteria and the financial health of companies, the report suggests that there is actually no financial trade-off between improved human rights performance and competitiveness. Instead, it points to neutral or positive relationships with operational efficiency and investor perceptions, suggesting we reframe human rights due diligence as compatible with and potentially supportive of long-term business resilience.
Alongside this, DCAF has completed a methodology-based analysis of recent changes to the WBA Corporate Human Rights Benchmark methodology, examining how updated benchmarking approaches translate these expectations into practice and what they signal for companies, investors, and policymakers.
What we found:
Methodological changes for the upcoming 2026 Corporate Human Rights Benchmark report strengthen comparability across sectors and clarify what is expected of companies when it comes to managing and disclosing human rights risks. In practice, this includes:
- Higher transparency expectations, with clearer and more consistent disclosures required on human rights commitments, due diligence processes, and outcomes.
- A stronger focus on remedy and accountability, raising expectations around accessible grievance mechanisms and credible remediation when harm occurs.
- More integrated stakeholder engagement, with engagement increasingly assessed as an ongoing part of human rights due diligence rather than a standalone exercise.
- Greater demands on data collection and management, as companies are expected to track risks, impacts, and responses in a more structured and verifiable way.
- Clearer signals for investors, with more standardized indicators supporting cross-sector comparability and decision-making analysis.
DCAF-ICRC recommendations influenced the methodology : DCAF-ICRC successfully advocated for the inclusion of an indicator on security, conflict prevention, and respect for human rights and international humanitarian law (IHL). Additionally indicators incorporating commitment to remedy and grievance mechanisms reflect our review and alignment with the UN Guiding Principles. Thanks to DCAF-ICRC, the upcoming Corporate Human Rights Benchmark will have increased transparency and information on how companies interact with security providers and ensure respect for human rights and international humanitarian law.
Granted, benchmarking frameworks cannot capture the full complexity and range of company behavior or on-the-ground impacts, because they rely on voluntary and publicly available sustainability reports and commitments. Companies may be implementing more or less practices aligned with the UN Guiding Principles than they self-report. However, the WBA Corporate Human Rights Benchmark provides a useful comparative snapshot of company behavior. The recent UNDP report on human rights and competitiveness highlights how these frameworks can serve as a useful baseline for implementation of human rights practices, encouraging a "floor-raising" regulatory approach that integrate human rights expectations into economic and competitiveness frameworks.
