What are the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights?

The UNGPs, endorsed by the UN in 2011, set out a corporate responsibility to respect human rights through ongoing due diligence: a policy commitment, identifying and addressing impacts, tracking effectiveness, and providing remedy. This checker is structured around those expectations and the OECD Due Diligence Guidance.

What are salient human rights risks?

Salient risks are the human rights at greatest risk of severe negative impact through a company's activities or business relationships. Identifying them, rather than treating all risks equally, is a core UNGP step so that the most severe and likely harms are prioritised for action.

Does a high score mean I am compliant with the CSDDD?

No. The EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive imposes specific legal obligations that go beyond this self-assessment. A high score indicates strong process maturity and a good foundation, but legal compliance requires reviewing the directive's text with qualified advisers.

Why does remedy matter so much in the scoring?

Under UNGP 22 and 29 to 31, a credible operational grievance mechanism and the provision of remedy where harm is caused or contributed to are essential, not optional. Companies that identify risks but cannot remediate harm fall short of the responsibility to respect rights.

How often should I repeat this assessment?

Human rights due diligence is ongoing, not a one-off. Repeat the assessment at least annually and whenever you enter new markets, onboard significant suppliers, or your salient risk profile changes, so the process keeps pace with your evolving value chain.

What is the Human Rights Due Diligence Checker (UNGPs)?

Walk through 30 indicators covering policy commitment, salient risk identification, supplier action, tracking, and grievance and remedy, aligned to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and OECD Due Diligence Guidance. For procurement and ESG teams benchmarking maturity. It runs free in your browser on Gera Tools, with nothing uploaded.

Human Rights Due Diligence Checker (UNGPs)

Name: Human Rights Due Diligence Checker (UNGPs)
Creator: Gera Tools
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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The UN Guiding Principles ask companies to know and show that they respect human rights through continuous due diligence, not a single audit. This checker turns that expectation into 30 concrete indicators across five pillars so procurement and ESG teams can benchmark where their process is strong and where it is exposed.

The five pillars covered

The assessment follows the UNGPs’ own structure, elaborated in the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Business Conduct:

Pillar	What it tests
Policy commitment	Public statement, board accountability, embedding in supplier contracts
Salient risk identification	Mapping, severity and likelihood prioritisation, supplier data
Integration and supplier action	Due diligence in procurement decisions, audit and improvement plans
Tracking and verification	KPIs, third-party verification, corrective-action follow-up
Grievance and remedy	Operational mechanism, access for affected parties, actual remedies provided

How it works

Each indicator is answered Yes, Partial, or No and scored 2, 1, or 0. The maximum is 60 (30 × 2). A percentage of the maximum gives the overall maturity score, while each pillar is scored separately so weaknesses can be located precisely:

Yes = 2, Partial = 1, No = 0
maturity % = total score / (30 × 2) × 100

Bands map the percentage to a tier from Initial, where salient-risk exposure is high, up to Mature, where the process is robust and UNGP-aligned.

Worked example and common failure pattern

A company with a strong public policy and supplier code but no operational grievance mechanism will score well on the first three pillars and poorly on remedy, which the pillar breakdown exposes immediately. This is the most common gap in corporate HRDD programmes: identifying impacts without a route to remedy fails the UNGP test outright.

A second common pattern is a high score on Pillars 1 and 2 (policy exists, risks listed in a register) combined with a Partial-heavy Pillar 3 — the company has a code of conduct but has not integrated HRDD into purchasing decisions or supplier selection criteria. That gap means known risks are catalogued but not acted on, which regulators and investors now treat with increasing scepticism.

Regulatory context

The EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), adopted in 2024, translates many UNGP concepts into binding obligations for large companies operating in or supplying to the EU market. The UK Modern Slavery Act and the German Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz (LkSG, in force since 2023) add further mandatory requirements in their respective jurisdictions. A high score on this checker indicates strong process maturity and a sound foundation for formal compliance — but legal obligations under each instrument must be assessed with qualified legal advisers, not self-assessed alone.

Treat the result as an internal benchmarking aid that points to the next investment, not as assurance or formal compliance evidence.