Companies face increasing expectations from investors, governments, civil society groups and consumers to respect human rights throughout their operations and value chain, and to be transparent about their human rights impacts and their efforts to address them.

Those expectations translate into interest in companies’ public reporting on how they manage their human rights impacts. While most individual consumers do not read corporate reports, the information contained in those reports is increasingly communicated far and wide, whether shared by the company through blogs and media, included in rankings of companies by investors, analysts or NGOs, or featured in an advocacy campaign or media coverage. In other words, while the reports themselves may be read by a relatively small audience, the information they contain can reach millions of people every year.