UN Global Compact

The UN Global Compact is a strategic policy initiative for businesses that are committed to aligning their operations and strategies with ten universally accepted principles in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption. By doing so, business, as a primary agent driving globalization, can help ensure that markets, commerce, technology and finance advance in ways that benefit economies and societies everywhere.

The Global Compact is a leadership platform, endorsed by Chief Executive Officers, and offering a unique strategic platform for participants to advance their commitments to sustainability and corporate citizenship. Structured as a public-private initiative, the Global Compact is policy framework for the development, implementation, and disclosure of sustainability principles and practices and offering participants a wide spectrum of specialized workstreams, management tools and resources, and topical programs and projects -- all designed to help advance sustainable business models and markets in order to contribute to the initiative's overarching mission of helping to build a more sustainable and inclusive global economy.

The UN Global Compact has two objectives:

• Mainstream the ten principles in business activities around the world
• Catalyze actions in support of broader UN goals, including the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

With these twin and complementary objectives in mind, the Global Compact has shaped an initiative that provides collaborative solutions to the most fundamental challenges facing both business and society. The Global Compact seeks to combine the best properties of the UN, such as moral authority and convening power, with the private sector’s solution-finding strengths, and the expertise and capacities of a range of key stakeholders. The initiative is global and local; private and public; voluntary yet accountable. The Global Compact’s has a unique constellation of participants and stakeholders -- bringing companies together with governments, civil society, labour, the United Nations, and other key interests.

The benefits of engagement include the following:  

• Adopting an established and globally recognized policy framework for the development, implementation, and disclosure of environmental, social, and governance policies and practices.
• Sharing best and emerging practices to advance practical solutions and strategies to common challenges.
• Advancing sustainability solutions in partnership with a range of stakeholders, including UN agencies, governments, civil society, labour, and other non-business interests.
• Linking business units and subsidiaries across the value chain with the Global Compact's Local Networks around the world -- many of these in developing and emerging markets.
• Accessing the United Nations' extensive knowledge of and experience with sustainability and development issues.
• Utilizing UN Global Compact management tools and resources, and the opportunity to engage in specialized workstreams in the environmental, social and governance realms.

For more information about the Global Compact visit www.globalcompact.lt (website of the National Global Compact Network) and www.unglobalcompact.org (corporate Global Compact website).