Methodology

To assess the degree to which a child rights issue has been addressed and integrated in a meaningful way by a company, the benchmark indicators are grouped into three maturity steps:

Policies & Commitments

The first indicator of whether a company has truly integrated a children’s rights perspective is whether it addresses child rights issues through a policy or an explicit commitment in its publicly available documents.

Commitments can cover different aspects of children’s rights across the impact areas of Governance & Collaboration, Workplace, Marketplace, and Community & Environment, and might include child labour, responsible marketing to children, product safety, or a commitment to contribute in a positive way to children in the local community.

Implementation

The next level of integration of a children’s rights perspective is the extent to which these policies have been integrated into an organisation’s processes. For instance, is the board ultimately accountable? Does it receive regular updates about developments on these issues? Are children’s rights issues included in materiality analyses? Does the company conduct supplier assessments? In addition, are there grievance mechanisms in place which allow both internal and external actors to report on cases of misconduct in relation to children’s rights issues?

Reporting & Actions

While policies and commitments are important to establish where a company stands on issues, such statements mean little if there is no periodic review, follow-up, and impact evaluation. To accomplish this, it’s essential that companies report on results (both positive and negative). Additionally, companies need to address their impacts, mitigate those that are negative, and contribute to positive development.

The information and data sourced by Global Child Forum is collected from publicly available sources (herein referred to as “Benchmark Data”).

Benchmark Data is provided in good faith, and for informational purposes only. Global Child Forum does not verify data sources beyond what is made available on company websites. Benchmark scores are shared with benchmarked companies and they have an opportunity to provide additional information that may impact their score. During our screening process, AI is used on a select set of indicators to increase time efficiency. Global Child Forum always reviews AI results to ensure maximum accuracy with our methodology.

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(i) constitute or be construed as investment advice;

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(iii) represent an assessment of any issuer’s economic performance, financial obligations nor creditworthiness;

(iv) be a substitute for professional advice; or

(v) otherwise be used as a reference of past performance to guarantee any future results.

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