Rights CoLab

A Roadmap for Integrating Human Rights into ISSB Standards

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Since our beginnings in 2019, Rights CoLab has worked to improve the integration of human rights into human capital standards. With a focus on the needs of investors, we endeavor to demonstrate the case for the financial materiality of human rights. Our methods include analysis of existing standards for opportunities to improve human rights integration, using large language learning models to surface evidence of financial materiality, and providing clarity on how the private sector can approach diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), labor conditions in supply chains, and other thorny human capital issues.

The work began as a research collaboration to define a strengthened set of disclosure standards through the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) that investors can use to persuade companies to improve labor rights for both their workforce and workers in supply chains. The project had two components: 1) a data science project, and 2) an Expert Group. The data science project — carried out with the Data for Good Scholars (DfG) Program of the Data Science Institute of Columbia University — used natural language processing and machine learning to identify new relationships between labor-related human rights risks and financial materiality. The Expert Group provided subject matter expertise to the data project and made recommendations on how to incorporate relevant findings into revised SASB standards to benefit workers while reducing reputational, operational, and legal risks for companies. Today, improving worker rights remains a key focus through our role in launching the Taskforce on Inequality and Social-related Financial Disclosure (TISFD) and research inputs into the work of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB).

Our Human Rights in Human Capital Standards initiative is supported by generous grants from Humanity United, Generation Foundation, and Tipping Point Fund for Impact Investing. Early funding was provided by a grant from the Moving the Market Initiative of Humanity United, UBS Optimus Foundation, and Freedom Fund.