What is United Nations Global Compact?

The United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) is the world’s largest voluntary 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.

First launched in 2000 with just over 40 business members, the UNGC has grown to over 10,000 members across 130 countries. Companies and organisations are encouraged to sign up to the UN Global Compact to show their commitment to good practice for sustainable business and social success and development. Signatories regularly report on their progress and initiatives in the four areas. COPs, or communications-on-progress, are available by country and by industry on the UNGC website for peer benchmarking and communication, with over 65 participants from Singapore as of October 2015.

The benefits of engagement include the following:

  • Adopting an established and globally recognised 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.
  • Utilising UN Global Compact management tools and resources, and the opportunity to engage in specialised workstreams in the environmental, social and governance realms.

The Global Compact Network Singapore advances the UNGC initiative and its 10 principles at the country level. We help companies understand what responsible business means within different national, cultural and language contexts and facilitate capacity building, outreach, learning, thought leadership and partnerships.

Our flagship event, the International CSR Summit by the Global Compact Network Singapore, is a gathering that includes business leaders, government officials, CSR practitioners, policy makers, entrepreneurs, academics, union and civil society leaders. Spanning over two days, it is an exchange of focused analysis and dialogue on the latest in the world of CSR. Find more details here.

We offer training workshops to build companies’ capacity in adopting corporate responsibility principles in their business strategy and practices. The programmes are offered in a range of areas such as sustainability reporting, supply chain management, ISO 26000, measuring and reporting organisational carbon footprint and more. More information on our training programmes can be found here.

At Global Compact, we understand the rich value that idea exchanges have. We organise Quarterly Sharing and Networking events, learning journeys and seminars that give our members opportunities to network and exchange ideas with likeminded CSR leaders and practitioners. If you are keen to attend or partner with us for a networking event, please contact us for more details.

We conduct research to provide thought leadership in the areas of CSR and sustainability and also document best practices in CSR. These are a free resource and are available on our website for downloading.

It is our endeavour to make available to those interested in gaining more knowledge about CSR to be able to do so with utmost ease. We also host a resource micro-site, ‘Enabling CSR Journeys’, which serves as an online repository of CSR-related information and case studies of companies practicing and doing well in their CSR journeys.

While the Compact is an independent, self-governed and self-managed entity, we work closely with the UN Global Compact in New York and act as a point of contact for UN Global Compact signatories in a country.

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