About

The World Benchmarking Alliance

Founded in 2018, the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) is a non-profit organisation holding 2,000 of the world’s most influential companies accountable for their part in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It does this by publishing free and publicly available benchmarks on their performance and showing what good corporate practice looks like.

WBA assesses companies in various benchmarks where relevant every second year, revealing where each company stands in comparison to its peers, where it can improve and where urgent action is needed. The benchmarks provide companies with a clear roadmap of the commitments and changes needed to meet science and society’s expectations of them. They equip all stakeholders, from governments and financial institutions to civil society organisations and individuals – including our community of ‘Allies’ – with the insights that they need to collectively ensure that the private sector changes.

The Corporate Human Rights Benchmark

The Corporate Human Rights Benchmark ranks companies globally on their human rights performance. It assesses what companies are doing to ensure respect for human rights – both within the ‘four walls’ of their business, as well as in their supply chains – through their policies, processes and practices, based on publicly available information.

Human rights are inextricably linked to the SDGs, with over 90% of the SDG targets directly connected to international and regional human rights instruments and labour standards.

The first Corporate Human Rights Benchmark was published in 2017.

2017 Corporate Human Rights Benchmark
98 companies across the agricultural products, apparel and extractives sectors.

2018 Corporate Human Rights Benchmark
101 companies across the apparel, agricultural products and extractives sectors.

2019 Corporate Human Rights Benchmark
195 companies across the agricultural products, apparel, extractives and ICT manufacturing sectors.

2020 Corporate Human Rights Benchmark
230 companies across the agricultural products, apparel, extractives, ICT manufacturing and automotive manufacturing sectors.

Press release

See our press release about the 2022 Corporate Human Rights Benchmark or send a media request.