Global Child Forum, a foundation established by the Swedish Royal Family to promote children’s rights, has just announced the results of its 2019 global benchmark study. As part of the Boston Consulting Group team partnering with the Stockholm-based non-profit to conduct the study, the findings have been eye-opening for me. Companies around the world are making some progress in protecting children—but not nearly enough.
The imperative to accelerate the pace of progress amid rising risks to child safety and protection globally will only grow more urgent. There is, of course, the moral issue of ensuring that companies protect the most vulnerable members of the population across their business value chain. But there is a more pragmatic reason to give this issue increased attention: the rapid growth in sustainable investing which factors company performance in areas such as children’s rights into investment decisions.
Some Improvement—And Some Troubling Gaps
The study, titled The State of Children’s Rights and Business: From Promise to Practice, assessed nearly 700 of the world’s largest companies, and how they are safeguarding children’s rights as part of their business value chain. Among the key findings:
In general our work revealed that companies continue to focus their efforts primarily around child labor. But while that is important, it isn’t sufficient. For one thing, companies often fail to adequately monitor their full supply chain when scrutiny of suppliers two or three steps removed from their own manufacturing operations would reveal problems. In addition, the impact on children from a company’s business extends far beyond labor practices, including a company’s environmental and social track record.
The Role of Investors
As I have seen firsthand in my work with private equity firms, that track record is getting more attention now than in the past. Assets managed under sustainable investing approaches, including strategies that integrate environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance into investment decisions, hit $30.7 trillion in 2018—up 34% in just two years. That growth is fueled in part by the mounting evidence that companies that lead in ESG performance generate better returns for shareholders.
Not surprisingly, children’s rights and a company’s overall ESG performance are inextricably linked. A company’s environmental record, for example, can have a significant impact on children’s health. And the degree to which a company supports and uplifts the communities in which it operates will have a major influence on the lives of children in those communities.
That’s why both companies and investors need to pay more attention to the rights of children around the world. If they don’t, I have no doubt they will ultimately pay a price in the market for that failure.
Johan Öberg is a Managing Director and Senior Partner in BCG’s Stockholm office and Head of the Private Equity sector within the PIPE practice. You may contact him on Linkedin or by e-mail at oberg.johan@bcg.com.
Johan Öberg is a Senior Partner and Managing Director at Boston Consulting Group. He leads the global private equity sector and is on the leadership team of The Boston Consulting Group’s Principal Investors & Private Equity practice. Johan has a broad experience from strategy, M&A and transformation projects globally. He holds a BA in business economics from Uppsala University and California State University, and an M.B.A. from INSEAD.
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In an effort to provide insights and guidance on how businesses protect – or fall short in protecting – children’s rights in South Africa, this report draws on one of Global Child Forum’s essential research products ‘The corporate sector and children’s rights benchmark’. More specifically, insights are provided across three areas where the corporate sector impacts children’s rights: The Workplace, The Marketplace, The Community and the Environment. In 2015, Global Child Forum, in partnership with Boston Consulting Group, published a benchmark study of the 271 largest companies in the region. This report is a follow-up to that study. An updated benchmark analysis has been conducted on 20 of the region’s largest companies.
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This year’s Global Child Forum welcomed heads of state and heads of companies, leaders from civil society and learners from across South America and beyond. All came together with the goal of providing the region’s children with the best possible path to productive adulthood. All came together with the belief that the business sector is key to achieving that goal. Nearly 400 delegates gathered in the FIESP building on Avenida Paulista in São Paulo, its soaring modernist architecture a fitting backdrop for tackling a far-reaching children’s rights agenda. Read the Forum report — full of inspiration, ideas for action and case stories.
Children’s rights are an essential investment in a sustainable future. Safeguarding these rights helps build the strong, well-educated communities that are vital to creating stable, inclusive and productive societies. The private sector impacts children’s lives both directly and indirectly, and all companies in all industries – global, regional or local – can make a difference. Business activity influences the daily life of children in a number of ways, from impoverished communities where children are held back from getting an education because they need to support the family with their income, to the marketplace where children react to marketing messages and learn about the world via the many products surrounding them. Companies that want to take part in the movement pushing sustainable development forward, creating the world that we together have formulated in the Sustainable Development Goals and Agenda 2030, need to safeguard, empower and consider the opinions of those we should be creating that world together with. Considering children’s rights holds the possibility of enriching your business and easing your way into the challenges of the future. Read these statements from companies and businesses that have incorporated a child rights approach into their work.
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Save the Children
As a global technology company, Microsoft is in a unique position to support children’s access to education and information while helping to ensure their safety online. The company has done this in three main ways, elaborated on in this case study:
Vodafone’s purpose is to “connect for a better future” enabling an inclusive and sustainable digital society. Its know-how and scale – with over 315 million mobile customers in Europe and across Africa – gives it a unique opportunity to drive positive change for society. Vodafone’s networks connect family, friends, businesses and governments and play a vital role in keeping economies running, including critical sectors like education and healthcare. With such scale, Vodafone recognises not only the positive impacts on people’s rights from digital technology, but also the potential that its operations could impact human rights – including children’s rights, even though Vodafone’s services are not marketed to them. Based on this insight, the company has been working actively to strengthen children’s rights across their business in the several ways, elaborated in this case study:
This playbook provides starting points for defining the different types of stereotyping that can have a harmful impact on a child’s well-being and development, with tools for business to create guidelines and strategies for ensuring diversity and inclusion in their creative content and products for children.
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UNICEF
To mark our 10-year anniversary, and to acknowledge the 30th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, we asked young people and adult stakeholders what they see as the most critical issues for business to consider in the coming decade. To answer this question, we commissioned a global survey – scanning opinions from Stockholm to Sao Paolo – to listen and learn so that we can better guide companies along their journey to create a better world for children. So what are the top 10 children’s rights and business issues? Read on to find out!
Ethical Toy Program partners with Save the Children and the Centre for Child Rights and Corporate Social Responsibility (CCR CSR) in this webinar to introduce the child rights and business principles in detail, child rights issues and responsible resourcing, best practices from the toy supply chain.
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Save the Children Sweden ...
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In this video we asked Alinde Melin, Global Children's Rights Leader at Inter IKEA Group, why IKEA has chosen to include children's voices in their work and what's in it for them. This video is part of a series of interviews with leading experts in the field. They were asked about the importance of child participation and business.
The Children’s Rights and Business Atlas helps businesses identify potential impacts on the lives of children, especially where it is most needed, and guides the integration of children’s rights into company due diligence practices and procedures.
The Marketplace Index measures marketing to children, and safe products and services for children including online safety. Businesses, investors and organisations alike need to understand how their actions impact children’s rights across the globe. The Children’s Rights and Business Atlas, developed together with UNICEF, is the first comprehensive resource to guide companies in assessing risks to children within industry sectors and regions of operation. Through indices, global interactive maps and country scorecards, the Atlas provides a quantitative assessment on the degree to which children’s rights are protected within 195 countries and across 5 industry sectors.
Save the Children is helping the leading Nordic toy and children’s products retailer to assess all their impact on children, from supplier to toy store. Christoffer Falkman is the Sustainability Specialist at TOP-TOY. Children’s rights and business videos
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Save the Children Sweden ...
Clas Ohlson is a leading hardware retailer in Sweden with over 200 stores in five countries. They source almost 70% of their products from Asia. Save the Children has supported Clas Ohlson with a child rights focused assessment of their entire value chain and continues to offer on-site support to factories in China. Klas Balkow is the CEO of Clas Ohlson. Children’s rights and business videos
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Save the Children Sweden ...
International furniture giant IKEA has been at the forefront of corporate work on human rights and sustainability for decades. Since the early 1990s, IKEA has been working with Save the Children on a range of projects addressing education for children, children in emergencies, and protection of children from child labour. Steve Howard is the Chief Sustainability Officer at IKEA Group. Children’s rights and business videos
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Save the Children Sweden ...
ICA is the leading grocery retailer in Sweden and one of the biggest actors in the Baltic states. ICA also works with sourcing and sales of non-food items. The company is one of the co-founders of the WeSupport project together with Save the Children’s centre for child rights. Maria Smith is the director of Environment and Social Responsibility at ICA. Children’s rights and business videos
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Save the Children Sweden ...
Together with the Indonesian Hotel and Restaurant Association (PHRI) in West Java, Save the Children has been integrating a child-centred corporate social responsibility project in the hospitality sector of Indonesia. The project worked to encourage members to integrate children’s rights into their member’s business operations and strategies. One result of the project was the creation of this toolkit, which included the assistance of academics, several NGOs, and input from child and youth participants. It consists of four tools for children’s rights integration and eight tools that inspire hotels and restaurants in responding to issues and problems that most frequently arise and impact children’s rights.
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Save the Children ...
The case study explores IKEA’s commitments to children’s rights. The study looks into how IKEA went from being a company which did not mention children (or their rights) to making them central stakeholders of their company. IKEA is also an advocate, both internally and externally, of the Children’s Rights and Business Principles.
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