1. Home
  2. News and insights
  3. Energy in focus magazine
  4. Corporate Human Rights Benchmark

bp is recognized for rising human rights standards

Release date:
10 December 2020
bp is ranked seventh out of 199 major global companies by the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark 2020, significantly improving on our previous score
 
🕒 1.5 min read | 📰 News| 💡 Why it matters

bp has ranked joint seventh out of 199 companies assessed in the 2020 Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB), alongside several well-known corporate sustainability leaders, such as M&S, Nestlé and Anglo American.

 

And higher than in previous rankings. Our improved performance is recognition for three important pieces of work that our team has carried out in the past 18 months:

  1. Revisions to our human rights policy.
  2. The publication of our labour rights and modern slavery principles.
  3. Our enhanced 2019 slavery and human trafficking statement.

Bernard’s view on LinkedIn

“We know we will be judged by our actions and while we have plenty more work to do, I’m proud of the progress we’re making on racial inequality, supporting local communities and emergency workers during the pandemic, and doing more to respect and protect workers’ rights across the world.”

First published in 2013, we updated our human rights policy in 2020 to now include clearer support for workers’ rights, water and land rights and respect for civic freedoms. 


In 2019, we published our labour rights and modern slavery principles. This document helps our businesses to check performance against our expectations, and includes an expectation of our contractors and suppliers to align with our commitment to respecting workers’ rights. 


Meanwhile, our enhanced 2019 slavery and human trafficking statement outlines work carried out in priority businesses to address labour rights issues. It covers key areas such as governance, training and responsible supply chain management.

“bp’s new purpose has further charged our commitment to human rights in everything that we do. I am delighted that the CHRB has recognized the work we have put into this space. Everyone at bp has a responsibility for respecting human rights.”

 

Nili Safari, human rights & social performance manager 

The CHRB is published by the World Benchmarking Alliance and assesses the human rights disclosures from 199 global companies in five sectors, including extractives, agricultural products and car manufacturing.

 

This year’s benchmark had a reduced scope, focusing on 13 core indicators in three themes: governance and policy commitments; human rights due diligence (HRDD); and grievance management and remedy. While the indicators were assessed using the full CHRB methodology, the reduced scope makes it difficult to make like-for-like comparisons with previous rankings. However, the benchmark found that we have made substantial improvement on these 13 indicators, versus 2019.

 

Giulia Chierchia, EVP of strategy and sustainability, added: “We’ll continue to learn from this assessment, both us and our sector, and other industrial sectors, so that we can further improve our approach to human rights.” 

💡 Why it matters

The CHRB – and specifically the 13 indicators featured in the 2020 edition – is designed to assess a business’s progress against the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). The benchmark is used by external stakeholders, including governments and investors, in their evaluations of a company. It aims to provide an objective assessment of year-on-year progress, allowing comparisons within and between industrial sectors, while taking account of sector-specific human rights issues.


The UNGPs underpin our own human rights policy and approach. Publishing our policy, principles and approach so that they might be scrutinized by organizations like the World Benchmarking Alliance supports our Aim 9 to become a recognized leader in transparency for our sector.

Watch this film for more on what bp is doing to protect human rights around the world

Be the first to know...

Keep up to date with all the latest developments on our net zero journey by signing up to our monthly newsletter