Human rights reporting used to be voluntary and selective. Today, governments are requiring companies to publish information about how they identify and address human rights risks and impacts in their operations and supply chains. These mandatory reporting laws aim to create corporate accountability for what has happened between a company and its workers, contractors, suppliers, communities and other rightsholders. 

To date, companies have been extremely successful at gaming disclosure laws to avoid candid reporting of impacts. Instead, much reporting today is a public relations exercise. Companies often publish self-serving reports that obscure the truth of impacts behind reports of charitable works. 

For all that these reports hide, they also make clear that many companies are not currently doing real HRDD or managing effective grievance mechanisms. Studying the failures of existing reports highlights areas where voluntary standards and legal requirements can be strengthened to improve reporting.  Strong reporting rules help close the gap between promises and practice, and create a record that can support better policy, an empowered public, better enforcement and, ultimately, better outcomes for rightsholders.