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Reference Organizations

The starting Reference Panel for GOVERNANCE.md. These are independent human rights organizations, indices, and mechanisms — not the adopting company — because Principle 3 holds that a company is not qualified to make this call itself. Adopters should treat this as a starting list to review and localize, not a fixed roster; organizations merge, wind down, or shift focus over time (the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark, for instance, is now run under the World Benchmarking Alliance after originating separately).

Tier 1 — multilateral / judicial (binding on their own, per GOVERNANCE.md §1)

  • UN Security Council — sanctions regimes
  • International Criminal Court — arrest warrants and convictions
  • UN Human Rights Council — Commissions of Inquiry, Special Rapporteur findings, treaty body findings

State-linked elevation — International Court of Justice

Not a Tier 1 source itself: the ICJ has no jurisdiction to name individual or corporate entities, only states. But per GOVERNANCE.md §1, an ICJ judgment or advisory opinion finding a state in violation (e.g., genocide, unlawful occupation) elevates entities substantially linked to that finding — government agencies, state-owned enterprises, named officials — to Tier 1 scrutiny for transactions connected to the underlying conduct.

Tier 2 — investigative and monitoring organizations

  • Business & Human Rights Resource Centre — tracks and publishes allegations against companies specifically, with a company-response mechanism; the most directly relevant single source for corporate designation purposes.
  • Amnesty International — investigative human rights reporting, including a dedicated tech/surveillance research arm (Amnesty Tech).
  • Human Rights Watch — investigative human rights reporting across sectors and regions.
  • Freedom House — publishes Freedom in the World and Freedom on the Net, useful for country-level and platform-level context rather than single-entity designation.

Tier 2 — benchmarking and indices

  • World Benchmarking Alliance — Corporate Human Rights Benchmark — ranks major companies against UNGP- and OECD-aligned indicators; strongest for large, publicly tracked companies.
  • Ranking Digital Rights — Corporate Accountability Index — evaluates tech, telecom, and internet platform companies specifically on freedom of expression and privacy disclosures.
  • Global Network Initiative — multi-stakeholder accountability mechanism specifically for tech companies on freedom of expression and privacy; membership itself is a positive signal, and its independent assessments are a useful negative-evidence source too.

Tier 2 — aggregators (cross-check, not primary source per GOVERNANCE.md §1)

  • RepRisk — aggregates and rules-based-screens tens of thousands of media and stakeholder sources daily; useful as a high-recall early-warning cross-check, not as a stand-alone basis for designation given its automated sourcing.

Sizing the panel

The list above is deliberately in the 8–10 range recommended in GOVERNANCE.md. Sector-specific adopters (extractives, finance, defense) should consider adding a sector body — e.g. the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights for extractives — rather than growing this general list indefinitely.