The United Nations Global Compact, also known as Compact or UNGC, is a United Nations initiative to encourage businesses worldwide to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies, and to report on their implementation. The Global Compact is a principle-based framework for businesses, stating ten principles in the areas of human rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption. Under the Global Compact, companies are brought together with UN agencies, labour groups and civil society.
The Global Compact is the world's largest corporate citizenship initiative and as voluntary initiative has two objectives: "Mainstream the ten principles in business activities around the world" and "Catalyse actions in support of broader UN goals, such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)."
The Global Compact was first announced by the then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in an address to The World Economic Forum on January 31, 1999, and was officially launched at UN Headquarters in New York on July 26, 2000.
The Global Compact Office is supported by six UN agencies: the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; the United Nations Environment Programme; the International Labour Organization; the United Nations Development Programme; the United Nations Industrial Development Organization; and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Read more about United Nations Global Compact: The Ten Principles, Facilitation, The UN Global Compact – Cities Programme, UN Global Compact in Australia, UN Global Compact in Syria, UN Global Compact in India, Criticism
Famous quotes containing the words united, nations, global and/or compact:
“In the United States there is more space where nobody is is than where anybody is.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Other nations use “force”; we Britons alone use “Might.””
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)
“The worst enemy of truth and freedom in our society is the compact majority. Yes, the damned, compact, liberal majority.”
—Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906)